Cairo, the 4th February, 2010

Arabic beauty

Beauty concepts vary so much depending on time and place...what is considered beautiful in Portugal may be considered hell ugly in another country and what used to be a gorgeous painter's muse from the Renaissance can be seen, by today's standards, as a fat weird lady who should be home baking cookies or devouring french fries.
And then there is the mutual influence both West and East offer each other (with some disastrous results)...we always seem to value what we don't have, that's for sure.
The neighbour's grass is always greener than mine, isn't it?!


Yesterday I was running in the treadmill (in the women's section of my gym) and caught sight of two quite disturbing images:
1. A lady covered with her hijab (the scarf that covers the head of many muslim women) was retouching her make-up to make sure her dark skin was not appearing from under her heavy white foundation.

O.k, not even mentioning how weird it is to train in a gym and sweat (in the women's section with no men AT ALL around) while wearing a head scarf and make-up. What will you do when the sweat gets in the way of all this mess of mascara, lipstick and foundation PLUS a headscarf that I imagine being suffocating!?

I never thought I would see this and yet I am remembered I am in Egypt so...anything and everything is possible!

Then the worry in this woman's face...ahhh...this was the worst! If someone saw her dark skin, hell would break loose, for sure...
VERY SAD.


2. Then, as I was running like a man (by arabic women's standards, yup!)...no make-up, no hairdo, no scarf or cute jewelry playing ding ding while I move...I catch sight of another disturbing image:
There was a special whitening lotion selling on television and the whole beauty show was about it! I knew that being white was a major asset for most arabic women and men. I also knew there is a huge prejudice over her concerning dark people (considered ugly and, somehow, low standard due to their colour). I had heard about sudanese and nubian people being harassed (not sexually, surprisingly!WOW) in the streets, offended, even beaten up.
I knew about all this nonsense. But I didn't know a beauty show could be based on a lotion that makes your skin whiter.
Then I realized we,westerners, have an whole business made of tanning products and services. I am in the possession of my very own tanning lotion, am I not?
So, if I wish to get darker, why on earth should I find so strange that another women wish to get whiter?!

TOUCHE. TOUCHE. TOUCHE.
Many times.

QUESTION:
So...what are WE doing here?
I spend hours by the sun to get tanned...the darker, the better...and never quite enough!

My egyptian assistant, that novel character that colours my days and nights with incredible, also absurd delicacies, is dark and covers herlself with white foundation to look...you guessed!... whiter.
In the West, there are tanning businesses and people get burnt and damaged from too much sun and too much tan machine sessions.
In the East, women die to get whiter and look at my winter's pale legs as if they were a master piece.

What if beauty could be universal and, simultaneously, absolutely personal? What if we destroyed all the beauty prejudices and standards and could enjoy each person for her/his own UNIQUE beauty?
What if we sttoped wishing to be someone we're not?
Now...would that be so difficult to achieve?


CONCLUSION:
When it comes to monkeys in the head and insecurities, human beings are pretty much the same everywhere.