Savvy Women

Dear SWM Blog Readers,

Greetings from Texas!  I arrived here about two weeks ago after completing a series of flights from Cairo to Midland, Texas, which included stops in Amsterdam and Houston.  From start to finish, the trip took twenty-four hours.  Needless to say, I was a bit tired once it was all over.

I’m currently visiting my mom who lives in the off-the-beaten-path town of Big Spring, which is located out in West Texas, in an area often referred to as “the Permian Basin,” an ambiguous way of saying “That Part of the State Where They Drill Down into the Ground to Find Oil.”    I’m spending most of my days catching up with friends and family, all those folks I haven’t seen for a year now.  In the days ahead, I’ll be traveling down to the Austin area to visit with my dad, stepmother, brother, sister-in-law, and sundry others (all with familiar, smiling faces).  I suppose this is a very roundabout way of saying that I’m spending less time in cyberspace than I am in real space right now.

As a result, I’ll keep this week’s blog short and sweet.  I’ve decided to share a video from Fora.tv, a site I’ve blogged about in the past.  This video makes a nice follow-up to what I wrote about last week.  The video shows Debbie Rodriquez, author of The Kabul Beauty School, discussing her experiences in Afghanistan at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, California.

If you want to learn more about Debbie and her bestselling memoire, I’d like to redirect you to “Behind the Veil,” an article I wrote for Savvy that appears in the “beauty” section of the magazine.

Happy viewing and reading!

Troy Headrick
The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com

I’ll be honest. When I first watched this must-see video about female empowerment, I became very emotional, especially as it became more and more about Sima Calkin and the story she had to tell.

Now, as I’m sitting here wondering where I should go with this blog after my opening paragraph, I’ve had a sudden inspiration. I’ve just remembered an old friend, someone I’ve known for a long time, a professional artist buddy, who once made a very bold proclamation during a conversation we were having about art and creativity and the like. In the middle of our talk, my friend asserted, “Art saves lives!”

After watching this video, I now think the same thing could be said about beauty and those (hairdressers and make-up artists and such) who help others become more beautiful. Beauty, like art, can save lives. All the evidence one would ever need to have to support such a claim can be found in Kabul Beauty School–Afghanistan.

From an aesthetic standpoint, my favorite part of the video comes in the opening minutes. The film begins in Kabul. There are numerous shots of people moving about on the capital city’s crowded and dirty streets. Many of those people are women who are clad in atrocious blue burkas. There is a soundtrack of traditional Afghan music playing in the background. Then, without warning, the scene changes. The viewer is now suddenly transported to a NYC fashion show, and there are images of female models, all wearing the very latest (i.e. not blue burkas) by the world’s great designers. These gorgeous women, some wearing very little (i.e. not blue burkas) are walking, in that bouncy way that models walk, up and down the catwalk. The music is different too. It’s now something very electronic and trendy. The juxtaposition of the streets of Kabul with this scene from a fashion show in The Big Apple is jarring. Those two places are literally (and figuratively) worlds apart. But, as the viewer is soon to learn, they are about to come together.

From an emotional standpoint, my favorite part of the video comes toward the end when Sima goes looking for her girlhood home and finds it. She breaks down as she goes inside the abandoned place and remembers what it had been like before she’d fled Afghanistan twenty-three years earlier.

While giving an interview prior to leaving for Afghanistan, Sima says something that’s very telling. She admits that she originally had misgivings about returning to her homeland. She wondered (I’m paraphrasing) what she had to offer. After all, she wasn’t a doctor, nor was she a nurse; she was only a hairdresser. What sort of contribution could a mere beautician make in her war-torn country? As the viewer comes to find out, the answer to this question is: quite a large contribution, actually.

I hope I don’t sound too preachy here, but there is a lesson in this for all of us. We can all make a contribution. We shouldn’t sell ourselves short.

Final comment: It’s an uplifting video that shows what can be done when a bunch of American women (some originally from Afghanistan) decide to help some of their sisters in a part of the world that is so often so misunderstood.

Troy Headrick
The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com

After rereading my June 29 blog post, it occurs to me that I didn’t spend enough time thinking about the Linda Elder quote I bolded.  The quote I’m referring to is this one:  “Yet the quality of our life and all of the decisions we make depend precisely on the quality of our thought.”

I want to spend a little more time in this week’s entry thinking about that quote and about how our lives are shaped by the thinking that we do.

I truly believe that we all have the power to determine who we want to become and the direction we want our lives to take.  Notice that I used the verb “to become” rather than “to be” in the previous sentence.  “Becoming” suggests growth and change and is a dynamic word.  “Being,” on the other hand, sounds very finished and static.

There have been a few times in my own life when I felt like the Troy that I was just wasn’t the Troy I wanted to be or needed to be.  One of those times came in 1993.  At that time in my life, I was terribly bored and unfulfilled and felt that my life lacked imagination.  I felt empty and alone.  I felt like I needed to undergo something akin to a radical spiritual makeover.

That dissatisfaction with my life prompted me to think about how I might live differently.  I eventually hit upon the idea that I could leave my job, my family, and even my country.  That thought led me to apply to the Peace Corps. Eventually, after passing all the rigorous exams required by the government during the application stage, I was accepted to become a Volunteer trainee.  Washington, D.C. then sent me overseas to live and work in Poland.

That marked the end of the Troy that I was.  A new Troy was born from that experience.

OK, I’ll cut to the chase.  Notice that I bolded “dissatisfaction” and “think” and “idea” two paragraphs earlier.  That’s because the change in my life started as a vague feeling I wasn’t reaching my full potential as a human being.  That feeling then led to the idea (the conception) that I could live differently.  That idea then became a plan which I fleshed out after much soul-searching.  Once I acted upon that plan, I found myself on the path to a spiritual rebirthing.

I truly believe (because I’ve seen it happen several times in my own life) that all of us can literally become new people by re-imagining ourselves.  Thought can lead to action which can then produce transformation and growth.

The important thing is that all renewal begins as an idea of renewal. Linda Elder is right.  The quality of our lives depends upon the quality of the thought we put into living.  Think creatively, and it is more likely that you’ll live creatively too…

What or who would you like to become?