Love declaration to my HIPS.

Egypt has a hip oriented culture.

Yes, it does. Not even the "abbayas" or the "burqas" can make the hips disappear. If only imagination could be eliminated but no despotic powers can ever go so far. Imagination is a right no one can take away from you.

The generous hips are considered sexy because they mean "FERTILE WOMAN". Oriental Dance, the national dance (so denied and repressed) illustrates this HIP centered culture.

Yet this "hip" oriented culture relates EXCLUSIVELY to the symbolic and literal ability of female procreation. PROCREATION. Get married and give birth to muslim babies. That seems to be the only accepted function of women´s hips around here.

Women´s generous hips are valued BECAUSE they represent the ability to give birth to actual human babies. FULL STOP.

Besides that, there is only REPRESSION and a sense of shame that is instilled in girls/women everytime they dare to expose the contours of their hips and their FREE expression. In this controlled expression resides the POWER of female sexuality and all its explosive effects. No one seems to be brave enough to deal with such thing, do they?!

A woman who loves and assumes her hips as vital and precious is also a sexually active person, a strong individual with awareness of her own CREATIVE power. Nothing more dangerous than this to a society where Men wish to rule over women as the stronger sex over the weakest.

Allowing the female hips to be FREE would mean allowing the WOMEN to be free...who wants that, for God´s sake???

As an Oriental Dancer, I put my own hips on the highest throne. Although Oriental Dance is all about the entire BODY and SOUL expression -not just the hips - there s no denying that the center of it all is lovingly resident in those round, pink pillars of LIFE.

I can now see, very clearly, that a Woman who does not feel proud of her hips is a person with low self-esteem, weak and very limited creative resources.

As I write, I use my hips on the process. Their power, striking energy and urgence to SPEAK UP, the passion half sleeping inside them, the sweet juices and waters that exist in this boat shaped divine part of my body are all PRESENT. Each word, as each movement arrive from the depths of my HIPS, not my brain. Or is there a special kind of brain IN MY HIPS?

As I dance, I obviously use them too. Jewels and diamonds hanging from the invisible belt I wear around them, proud of who I am, the potential CREATOR of babies but, most of all, the ESSENCIAL CREATOR of MYSELF, my LIFE, my ART, my REALITIES, my CHOICES, my STRENGHT.

I admit my pride over my HIPS. More than my brain, more than my borrowed talents, more than the physical aspect many focus on. My HIPS are my biggest asset, source of pleasure and knowledge, creation and destruction, after all: LIFE.

If I could, I would write my HIPS a love declaration. They don´t need it though.

They know all too well how I hold them between my hands as if I was holding a precious World of its own, the reason why I insist on going forward, the reason I LOVE my men passionately the same way I let them go passionately when love is not around anymore. The same reason why I DANCE passionately. It is ALL in my HIPS.

No Love declarations are required, after all. The JOY I carry with me on a daily basis is there to speak for myself as that joy is a product of the sensuous, real pace of my heart so cleverly used by the Queens of this story, my story, the story of every Woman who knows what it means to be a WOMAN. It is all there, no words needed, in my HIPS. In OUR hips.