The Bottom Line

So I was flipping through an American Vogue magazine, poolside, the other day. Lest anyone is concerned about my choice of reading materials, don’t worry, I have Paul Harding’s Tinkers, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna and a New Yorker bedside (all excellent pros that I highly recommend). I just need something a little lighter when I’m trying to keep an eye on the girls running around from pools to water slides to beach (tough life, I know). Once again I was wondering why I bothered with a fashion magazine since it’s full of painful looking six inch high heels and outrageously expensive clothes that I will never wear. Some of them are actually quite beautiful, but I’ll wait until they’re watered down into something more affordable at the local Forever 21 (think Old Navy). And there it was, near the front of the magazine, a two page advertisement featuring the model Kate Moss. She is lying front side down on a beach, casually staring at the camera, stark naked except for the fact that her butt has been scribbled out with a big fat marker. This made me laugh out loud. Somebody in the UAE has a government job that must be titled something like Fat Marker Scribbler Outer. She (I’m guessing a woman has this job, otherwise there is a definite conflict of interest here) has to go through thousands of magazines from throughout the world wiggling her sharpie over visuals that are deemed offensive. Then it really got me thinking. The black and white photo is very tastefully composed. It reminded me of the coy neo-classical Odalisque painted by Ingres way back in 1814. It might be almost 200 years later, but a different culture now considers this inappropriate. The United States, of course, have their own limitations, which are more conservative than France, for example. Even Greek statues, naked and glorious, had fig leaves strategically placed centuries later.
Had the backside not been scribbled out, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But instead of the sharpie making me ignore what it was hiding, I want to know much more about it. Is it just a silhouette or is it her, umm, bottom line. Except for maybe being slightly annoyed by her pretty pouty face, I can’t say I’ve ever thought much about Kate Moss in my life, let alone her backside. And now it’s really bugging me. So, what is allowed visually in the U.S. these days? Somebody stateside, help me out here. It’s the Vogue with Halle Berry on the cover, page 60.

The long flowing black abayas that women wear here are a little like the big black markers. You’re not supposed to see what’s underneath. Like Kabuki theatre stage hands dressed in black, you’re just not supposed to notice them at all. When I first arrived in Abu Dhabi, I asked Abdul, the nice Public Relations Officer (PRO) helping me with my residency paper work why it is that he and other Emirati men wear all white while the women wear all black. He laughed, while driving his fancy car and drinking a Starbucks coffee, and simply said he didn’t know. So maybe the clothing is so ingrained in the culture here that the Emirati don’t even think about it. When we visited the Grand Mosque, I asked our fully covered female guide the same question. She responded that the myth is men wear white because they are angelic and women wear black because they are the devil. But she emphasized that is the myth and not the truth. Right. The real reason, she explained, is because you cannot see through the black gowns at all. I’ve also been told that there is beauty in sameness. I’m not entirely satisfied with any of these answers. Perhaps it is because I’m not entirely satisfied with the very fact that men and women have such a limited choice in their exterior appearance and will never be happy with any answer I hear.

Back to my Vogue, there are lots of malls around here chalk full of the very expensive clothes advertised in the Magazine. I might not be able to afford them, but for the local Emirati, money is no obstacle whatsoever. In public, The Emirati women may be covered in a flowing black abaya, hiding their hair under a sheyla, and possibly hiding their face behind a burka. But underneath the abayas, they are more likely than not to be wearing the latest Armani creations. The only people that can appreciate these fancy threads are immediate family members and girlfriends. I have not been to a local traditional Muslim wedding myself, but from what I understand, this is one of the few opportunities for the women to show off their amazing outfits. Except even at weddings the women and men have their parties in completely separate rooms.

It should be noted that hiding the face behind a burka is more of a Bedouin tradition than a Muslim requirement. Less than 1% of Muslim women worldwide wear a burka. Most are in the middle-east, home of the Bedouins. Burkas have caused quite a stir much further away, in France, where burkas were recently banned. Many Muslim women protest their abolition and say wearing a burka is a personal choice. Interestingly, burkas and sheylas have become more prevalent in some countries recently. The UAE has become an incredibly international country in just a few decades. It is full of tall modern buildings and fast cars from all over the world. Aside from numerous unimpressive small mosques and a smattering of heritage centers, there is very little left that can be identified as local character. Perhaps the black abaya, sheyla, and burka that the women wear and the long white dishdasha that the men wear can be considered a way to preserve the local traditional and religious customs. I suspect that there is lots of peer pressure involved too. Once a young woman or man starts to wear the national dress, they are expected to wear it for the rest of their lives. Perhaps I'll have a better understanding of the traditional dress the longer I live hear, but right now, I have a long way to go.