Perhaps I should expand on this, despite the edit window expiring. (Nobody spotted the mistake that the sentence as written implies that "programmers" and "women" are exclusive categories, either).

Basically attractiveness has a very large performative component. It's not just the physically visible elements of hair, makeup and diet; but a whole chunk of emotional labour in making oneself outwardly pleasant and not letting the smile slip. And further emotional labour in simply worrying about this element of how one is percieved by others.

In particular, maintaining a marriage as a mail-order bride is obviously going to require a whole bunch of work and self-sacrifice. I don't think the average mail order husband is going to be happy to act as a translator for his wife while she goes off to e.g. pursue a full time hobby of landscape painting; he's going to expect a certain amount of domestic labour and subordination, while she at the very least has to put up with learning a foreign language while being separated from her family.

There's an element of indenture here that's been mostly (not entirely) extirpated from marriages among Westerners of equal social status.