Let’s say you’re born in Russia. You do well in your schoolwork. You excel at athletics. You can drink a full bottle of vodka and down a pack of pickled herring in under 10 minutes. Your stunning looks put Maria Sharapova to shame. But above all, you are a patriot and you love your country. It only makes sense that you would eventually be recruited into the exotic world of espionage.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the USA. Live amongst them. Learn their crazy foreigner ways. Blend.

You will need to make sacrifices in order to do so. Your Russian name of Natalia Pereverzeva will need to change to “Cynthia Murphy”, syllables so strange that you can barely form them. You will need to move into a house several times larger than your current home, preferably in suburban New Jersey. You will need to tend your yard, because that is what all Americans do, producing prize-winning dahlias and a hedge row that you could split hairs on.

Scariest of all, you will need to change your wardrobe. Your floor-length fur coat and babushka do not make sense in this world. So you enter a store and find a dress. A dress that makes you feel like an American housewife with a beautiful garden. It hugs your curves just right, and shows just the right amount of cleavage. As you admire yourself in the mirror, you shake off the sudden desire to go bake an apple pie. Those types of feelings cannot be abided. You are a Russian spy, after all.