Sunday, December 24, 2006

بكتيريا تحت المجهر Bacteria Ta7t Al Mijhar




While I was waiting for my turn at the hairdresser, I browsed some stupid girly magazines to kill sometime. As I was flipping through the magazines sarcastically reading headlines like : "How to apply make up to become like Sharon Stone" and "Matha yukhabbi2u laki il 3am al jadeed"I was sickened to read the article shown next (right to left)









How stupid are Arab women? We will never advance or have our dignity as long as we keep feeding on such articles. More than 80% of Arab women in the Middle East see nothing wrong in the answers given.

I bet that mothers teach their daughters to never say no and to “please” their man whichever way possible.

This is truly insulting and demeaning for women. If a husband sleeps with another woman it’s ok and if a woman cheats on her husband then she is to be divorced and maybe killed? Where’s the justice in that? Since when is betrayal and adultery justified? This is plain humiliation! As long as women believe this idiocy then our culture will keep being viewed as retarded and suppressed. Why should we blame others for calling our women “without choice” or “controlled”?
We, Arabs, love to talk about freedom of speech and that our women are people of change, negotiators and public figures. None sense! If we can’t admit that men’s sexual desires and playful lives are acceptable with all virgin girls then we have a problem.

All issues in these magazines talk about how to keep a man, how to seduce him and how to live for his sake. And when Mr. Perfect looks at another girl in a luscious way then it’s ok maskeen mish b2eedo kul il shabab haik!!
These excuses don’t exist, if we keep hiding under the “macho man” icon then our
marriages will keep falling apart, will keep being top media topics and saddest
of all will keep us in denial that everything is fine.

These kinds of guys are definitely bacteria and not husbands. Bacteria as described in the encarta as follows:
'free living organisms not able to be seen except under a microscope, found in rotting matter, in air, in soil and in living bodies, some being the germs of disease.
Bacteria are so small that they can be seen only under a microscope that magnifies them at least 500 times their actual size. Some become visible only at magnifications of 1,000 times
they occur in diverse shapes and types. As a group they carry out a broad range of activities and have different nutritional needs. They thrive in a variety of environments'


See the relevance or not yet? :)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lara, i am impressed! quite radical article... but my friend you are right... we grow up with these magazines and Cinderella stories... we spend our lives searching for love that can only be given to us by some perfect man that would never exist... because men grow up with other sort of pressure to be a man and to have conquests and to polyrelationship or he is not a man... the pressure is not only on us, it is on them as well, but it is pulledin opposit directions
Madas

Anonymous said...

ha3 ha3... I loved the analogy :D
I actually have lots of comments; I hope I’ll manage to organize them...

I agree that such mentalities do exist in our society, but I'm very positive that they exist in more-open societies too, it's not in Arab communities only. Also I think that your 80% is a little bit exaggerated, at least in Jordan... and be sure mothers don't teach ultimate obedience to their daughters as you imagine, cause if so, you wouldn't hear that huge amount of stories about Mo's in law... many of them are really true by the way.

More to add, such post is humiliating to men if not equally then more; “yash3or bel malal, aw yoreed al ta2akkod men thokooratoh”, “I’3na2 mo5ayyelatoh”, “yash7ath rojoolatoh”…. What the heck… I really don’t think you girls think that we men are like that!! Do you? Please tell me not! Gosh…

Regarding Arab women being suppressed and having no choice, I think that’s just normal, cause they are not smart enough to make choices… (Please look at the mirror after reading the previous statement, haaaa haaa, cause I’m just kidding :D)… I don’t deny that SOME Arab women are suppressed, and they don’t have a huge part in decision making, sometimes not even in their own houses… but things are getting better, and I believe if all couples get married based on intellectual attraction more than physical and financial attraction, this issue will be resolved… many guys are just after a hot babe, and many girls are just after a rich guy… unfortunately.

The last comment I wanna write (not the last comment I have though) is look how they play with words, “yanthor bi i3jab ela fata 3asreyyeh tamor men amamoh”, since when has the word “Modern” became a synonym to “Hot”, something insides me says it wasn’t a coincidence, it was a subliminal message, a poisoned idea someone is trying to implant in girls’ heads… I don’t think a girl has to be hot and showy in order to be modern, being modern is about mentality, a modern girl can even wear veil, that don't go against being modern I believe, I actually find myself attracted to girls with character and ideology, not those (or not ONLY those :P ) ones with hot bodies and fine makeup.

Sorry for the long comment… nice post lara

Anonymous said...

Lol, At some point of my life, I was always thinking that there these ideas are not true, and that the Arab world is not as bad as we always call it. I was only looking at the people around me, but sadly, it is right when we say that we are of the third world. TOTALLY RIGHT, there is a small minority that is not, but the majority is so. What you have said reflects the fact that the way families raise their kids, does not only make them laid back, but also unable to think. They don’t have the ability to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong. What shall we do about it if the our dear parliament is of these people, when a law was to be set to cancel the light punishment on men killing their wives for cheating on them (honor murder) the parliament refused and kept it as it was (men get 3 years of jail, and women get a life time penalty), ain't it ridiculous. What do you expect if the majority vote for the stupid, and the minority votes to no one.

Anonymous said...

I read the post and tried to keep my mouth shut, but u know what i couldn't, because at the very same day i heard almost the same speech from another girl, and u know what it really ticked me off, the fact that u can only spot the bad guys and u 4get about the good guys, who btw does really exist.
i never did that, really ;) but this time i tried to put myself in ur shoes to figure this out, I tried to think as a women, hehe..dont laugh. I figured there is nothing more humiliating than to be objectified by the so called bacteria, u learned not to give anybody the benefit of the doubt and u r entitled to, guys can be very annoying and superficial, i am talking about a majority here, and most of the time not worth it.
what i want from u now is to put urself in our shoes, there is a minority who doesn't walk those roads, doesn't look at the outside and can appreciate the uniqness of the inside, and they are Nauseous from those other guys who ruined the overall picture, can u tell me how do they feel hearing those judgments and not being able to defend theirselfs…. because they know its the truth...
i guess what i am trying to say here is those minority worth more to dignify and write about than those "bacteria majority" because they earned that right.
hehe...saraha i dont know in which group i can be classified but i know that both exist. That is another fact.and we all should take those minority into consideration.

Anonymous said...

wo btw its me...mi amiga...

Anonymous said...

Ok lara, I'm giving you free advice :)

1. Don't read anything when you're waiting at the hairdresser's because you don't need to get judgemental before you get a haircut.

2. Start watching desperate housewives and see what women in other parts of the world think (by the way the series is a success because it accurately portrays a huge segment (and by that I mean more than 50% not 80%) of American women.

Now the thing is they are not trying to tell women to accept such behaviour from men, they are merely giving explanations and not neccessarily excuses, i have to tell you I find the explanations they give correct to a great extent. Saying that a husband cheating on his wife doesn't mean he doesn't love her anymore, or that men staring at other women doesn't mean they do not value their partners is true in many many many cases.

Well as for the bacteria thing, yeah sure that's the feminist way of putting it. Men are pigs, men are dogs, men are bacteria. But that won't really help you a few million years of evolution changed anything then think again.

أُكتب بالرصاص said...

المدونة حلوة قوي
بس واضح انك بقالك فترة هاجراها

عل المانع خيرا

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