Dear Log,
Is this an intentional joke? My "this can't be real" detector has been giving a lot of false positives lately.
Re:Have a Coke
TorgoX on 2003-04-01T09:59:34
- The writer's tone (huffy, panicked, pious, indignant, and shaming)
- the whole concept of the phenomenon of SHOCKING VIXENS wearing EYELINER and DUNGAREES under their GIANT TARPS, and telling people their TELEPHONE NUMBERS
- and also the casually introduced phrase "The young man was polite but he wasn't interested in anything outside the job. He had been engaged to his cousin for years."
Re:Have a Coke
rafael on 2003-04-01T10:16:20
The writer's tone sounds like classical puritan rethorics. The shocking vixens that wear eyeliner are familiar characters since Cato, although Cato didn't know about cell phones. And the timidity of males is a common phenomenon in uebermacho societies. (If you don't meet women anywhere, you don't know how to behave with them ; if you don't know how to behave with them, you're glad that mom and dad finds a wife for you, because meeting women, those strange creatures, is just freaking you out.)Ever watched the Sopranos ? (very good show IMHO). Wonder why all important characters are women ?
Cities closer to the Gulf states were already becoming fairly westernized in the mid-90s. Even Riyadh was becoming slightly more liberal, although the mutawah still tried to keep a fairly tight moral grip.
It's a strange secret hidden within their public anti-woman culture that women do hold a tremendous amount of power. Not civic or religious power associated with equal rights, but more like a commodity. (Think of a seller's power in a seller's market.)
Saudi women have long dressed lavishly at home, in public (women) places, and under their abayas in between. I am surprised they have phones, though. (Then again, if it's so the men can keep tabs on them, maybe I'm not.)
