ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the dominant representation of the newly rich woman as a key feminine figure in the Russian popular media. Businesses founded by newly rich Russian women are portrayed as creating positive experiences for others in the same social group and seldom established out of economic need. Such businesses are supposed to be both creative and fun and ultimately, a form of female self-expression. The chapter aims to shed light on the mechanisms for conceptualising class through the lens of popular media culture in today's Russia. It identifies some of the significant class-based dimensions underlying the ambiguous, often quite pejorative, media representations of elite Russian women epitomised by the term 'Rublevka wives'. It then demonstrates that the feminine elite habitus is perceived through these media and is reproduced as a significant form of work for the 'common woman', One of the central, and also the problematic, concepts in studying female-oriented mass media is the notion of the 'common woman'.
