h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Doesn't seem odd anymore, this job. Everyday I come into work to teach. The students are all girls aged 18-24 (with a few older ones thrown in) and every single one of them wears the black abbaya and shayla (robe and headscarf). A couple of years ago in Saudi my boys almost all wore the white "thobe" and red "gutra", but there were always a couple of (usually Shi'ite instead of Sunni) lads wearing jeans, sweatshirts and baseball caps. Also, the boys learned hundreds of different ways of putting on he headscarves to give a bit of individuality. The girls, however, seem to frown on any such overt shows of individuality, and although you get the occasional glimpse of brightly-coloured dresses underneath, the outward appearance must always be uniformly black. What must they make of the girls in the West, wearing all different kinds of clothes, having to worry everyday about what to wear, make-up, shoes, hair - all of it? What must they make of the girls squeezed into short skirts, falling out of low-cut tops or suffering from a bad-hair day? Wake up looking grotty? Throw on the robe and scarf - problem solved. You hear in the West of the veil being a sign of oppression, but I wonder how many women back home would like the oppression of clothes, make-up, fashion magazines, skeletal supermodels and stunning movie stars removed. Hmmm...

Hi Abu Scruffy, are you still around? What exactly are you doing. Sounds interesting.

Anyway. I don't know which Arabic country you live in, and I personally have only been travelling in Syria, which I guess is relatively liberal. But in the souqs there you could find all these really really - I actually don't know what to call them - dresses and underwear, consisting of almost no cloth at all with lots of laces and stuff like that and you really started wondering what was going on in the homes of all these vailed women. Also the shoes were sometimes rather "fashionable" as it was the only real chance to make a change in the outfit for some of them.
But I was also wondering what these deeply vailed woman sitting next to me in the bus was thinking when they were showing all these Egyptian movies. You know the man meets girl and the rest of the movie takes place in the bedroom - style ones.
Another thing I remember... I hope this is not too boring for you...one of my friends is form Iran. Her family had to leave the country when she was a child and last summer she and her mother went back for the first time. Actually being a bit afraid that they might not be allowed out again, though. So when she packed her bag, she put all these loose fittig long sleeve shirts and stuff in and of course vails and all that. Her mother already wondered whether she wouldn't want to take any other things, but thinking of all the trouble about even having to be vailed for her passport picture, she didn't. Arriving in Teheran and getting back to the family home, all her aunts and cousins were really shocked when they unpacked her bag. And my friend herself was even more surprised, she said that at home they would be wearing things she would never even dare to wear in Germany, like tight sleeveless shirts, minis, lots of makeup, worrying A LOT about their outfit... Outside of course they were all black and indifferent.

Hey Feffi,
Sorry I took so long to reply. Yup, sounds like Arabia. I've lived here for 8 years now, in 3 different countries. I remember in Riyadh, supposedly a bastion of conservatism, there was a shop called "Oh La La!" which sold VERY sexy underwear. Yes, it does make you wonder what is on underneath. Religiously Muslim women are encouraged to be sexy and attractive, but only for their husbands of course!