Sociological Observations: Sisterhood and Romance

Ok so having a sociology degree and all I thought I might let you in on some observations I've made. Sisterhood and Couples are powerful social institutions here so I will attempt to describe.

Sisterhood

There is a collective consciousness of what it means to be female, and the role that all women have in looking out for each other. This is particularly apparent within the family home and the womens' metro car.

APPEARANCE:
First of all, it is the responsibility of all women to look out for each others physical appearance in public. This means that pointing out physical flaws among women is not only not rude, but the most polite way of expressing sisterly love. I mean you wouldn't want your sister to go out looking like that in public, right? (my friend Jo is excellent at this form of sisterly love, hehe).

For instance, my new Egyptian sister, after calling my eyebrows wahish and mish kwayis (ugly and not good) proceeded to use a piece of twisted thread to rapidly pull out every piece of disapproved hair on my face and Eunice’s (don’t ask how this is possible). After this extremely painful procedure (I was literally crying and bit my lip to the point of bleeding) they proceeded to proclaim that I was now a girl, before they had thought maybe I was a boy. Eunice and I laughed really hard when they said this and so they proceeded to tell us this probably twenty times over the next two days, next commenting on various other peoples’ excessive leg and arm hair which made them look like men, to their face, this was always funny and never offensive. We also had an interesting comparison of beauty procedures in America and Egypt and their costs and health issues, even with the language barrier, which was amazing.

Another example: while riding the metro, two heavily make-uped and higabed girls in front of me proceed to touch up each others' faces. One has a dark zit the size of half her nose that the other is furiously trying to cover with make up. A few minutes later, another stranger comes across the train to comment on the zit and give tips for helping it go away, while feeling all over her nose. All three girls laugh about this, thank each other, and this stranger gets off the train.

DANCING:
All women in Egypt know how to dance. Lydia, our five year old neice of sorts, puts on a ridiculously good dance show every night in her home. Last night all the women of the family (including us) were forced to participate. They use a bowl for a tabla (drum), haul out the boom box and clapping, and the women show off their stuff while the father of the family (Abu Hany) is locked in his room. This is for women only.


Romance

LITERATURE:
interesting observation by Amir (my English lit major colleague): There are a lo of differences between Arabic literature and English literature. For instance, we always compare things to our beloved, not the other way around, because she is obviously more beautiful than anything else in the world. Also, we would never say, like Shakespeare, "shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" because summer is hot and miserable. That would be an insult.

WEDDINGS:
there have been about 12 weddings that I've seen since I've been here for about two weeks, I've been invited to at least 5 weddings.

Weddings involve huge parties where everyone's invited, there's dancing, processing with singing, clapping and ululating through the streets while women wear ridiculous huge white dresses with long sleeved skin colored shirts underneath and insane amounts of garish make up.

It costs 40,000 Egyptian pounds just to pay the government to be able to get married (this is a ton of money) and then you have to pay for the huge party in which you feed everyone (slaughter an ox perhaps?) and make sure they're happy. Luckily the drinking doesn't really happen, that would be another ridiculous cost.

Everyone I've talked to here has stated marriage as having already happened for them or a goal for their future, and also is always a good topic for conversation: when, with what kind of person, etc.

In other news

I visited my host family this weekend, they were super excited to see me, as I was to see them. I was a lot more relaxed in the crazy neighborhood of embaba this time, and my host mama still has the ring I gave her, and watch. I love her lots. Pictures are kinda hard to deal with here with the internet, but hopefully I can post some more.

My students are amazing. One called yesterday to sign up for another class and requested me as their teacher! yay! Another one is also working on juvenile justice in the court system in Egypt to make it work better and to end female circumcision, craziness!! I feel unqualified but evidently I am. People are always like, "inti modarisa? inti sowayer!" (you're a teacher? you're so young!) but its great. I got the schedule worked out more too with the other teacher.

OK so that's all I have time for. Love you all!