Accidentally Eye Candy

The glare of the desert sun off of endless concrete buildings is blinding. But should my girlfriends and I leave our sunglasses on our nightstands, we’re less upset about our sore, squinty eyes than the fact that we’ve forgotten our protective shields. A friend of mine recently complained, “if I don’t wear my sunglasses, I end up making eye contact with people and then they get the wrong idea.”

By “get the wrong idea” she means that strange men believe she wants to sleep with them.

My walk home from school takes twenty-five minutes. During that walk, I have everything from ogler to stalkers. From the moment I got off the plane in August, experienced ex-pats warned me that a lot of the men here assume that non-Muslim women are, at best, easy, and, at worst, prostitutes. This notion is partly due to the presence of a large number of Russian and Filipino prostitutes in the area. But it is also an example of a cultural misconception. Because we let our hair flow and our calves and forearms see sunlight (everything else must be covered, according to Sharjah law), we are immodest whores. “Don’t let yourself be in the same room with any of your students’ fathers or the male teachers,” my boss warned at the start of the year. “They’ll think they can sleep with you.”

Whether they are really entertaining such thoughts or not, it is certainly uncomfortable to be alone with an Arab man for very long. I have several Arab male friends, but we always interact in a group. Should we be left alone in the same room, things get awkward quickly. I don’t know if it is sexual desire on their part or the fact that they are not accustomed to the situation.

When I am walking home from school, though, there is no question what they are thinking.

I recently returned from two weeks in Uganda, where I received my share of stares. The difference in the ogling of the two countries was palpable. If anything, the attention was more obvious in Uganda. Walking down the street, men, women, and children yelled, “muzungu” (white person) and “hello, how are you?” The men proposed marriage, cried, “mama,” “my size,” and, “big one” – all, apparently, woefully misguided terms of affection. Nevertheless, their double-takes and cries had an innocent feel. Tourism in Uganda is not very developed, and people are genuinely surprised to see muzungos. Uganda is considered one of the friendliest African countries, and perhaps because of their welcoming smiles and helpful advice, the marriage proposals feel like playful teasing. The attention still makes venturing out in public somewhat exhausting, but I did not feel degraded.

In contrast, my Sharjah oglers are usually silent. They do not smile; they watch me with cold eyes. Silently and slowly, they tail me with their cars. Today, three men gave me lingering once-overs. Their gaze has nothing to do with the color of my skin, and everything to do with the fact that they can see my skin at all. It’s not that I’ve never been checked out or catcalled before, but when it happens in other places, I usually look nice. Today, I have greasy hair and dirty, unflattering clothes. The souvenirs from my Ugandan safari and white-water rafting trip include several bruises, a motor-bike burn on my leg, and a black eye (I forgot my sunglasses, so it’s on display). I hardly look hot.

But these men don’t see any of that. They are not objectifying my face or even my body, in the sense that we in the West commonly think of it. They are not analyzing and appreciating my curves; they are staring because they are there, and because I am not Muslim, they think they are available. The difference in the gaze is the difference between a man spotting a beautiful woman walking by and a man picking up a prostitute on a street corner.

My Muslim girl friends would say that it is because men are such horny animals that they cover themselves. Even the sight of a woman’s hair, they tell me, makes men crazy. As a Western woman, I see it in the opposite way. Because Sharjah society is so segregated, men have limited interaction with women and do not know how to act around them. Because women’s hair and bodies are covered, men do go crazy at the sight of it. We create our own realities, and this reality involves men acting creepy. Especially when I leave my sunglasses at home.

Tags: Gender, sex