Savvy Women

This semester I’m teaching a first-year writing course at AUC and have chosen the topics of “pleasure” and “pain” to guide my reading and writing assignments.

In preparation for that class, I was sitting in one of my favorite cafes recently and reading the “Preface” of Motivation and Personality, a book by the great Abraham Maslow, the feel-good psychologist renowned for his discussions of the “self-actualizing” individual, the sort of person we should all strive to become.

Suddenly, while moving down the page, I came across the following passage:

“I think that great social and educational changes could occur almost immediately if, for instance, we could teach our young people to give up their unreal perfectionism, their demands for perfect human beings, a perfect society, perfect teachers, perfect parents, perfect politicians, perfect marriages, perfect friends, perfect organizations, etc., none of which exist and simply cannot exist…Such expectations we already know, even with our inadequate knowledge, are illusions and, therefore, must inevitably and inexorably breed disillusionment along with attendant disgust, rage, depression, and revenge.”

I would like to add that the perfect woman, mother, and/or wife doesn’t exist either, not in reality, though much of American popular culture would suggest otherwise, putting women under extreme pressure to achieve an ideal.

It is hard for me to speak about other cultures and societies, but in America we seem to have fallen in love with the idea that every woman can “have it all” (or be it all) if she tries hard enough. Not getting it all (or being it all) leads to feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy (to add to Maslow’s above list).

As I’m writing this, I’m wondering why we feel that “having it all,” that being “perfect,” is something attainable and thus worth striving far. Are Americans, by nature, given to flights of fancy, or have we been victimized by Madison Avenue and Hollywood?

A couple of paragraphs earlier, I said that popular culture was in large part responsible for inculcating this value of perfectionism in Americans. To prove my point, I’ve included a TV commercial from the past, one that I remember very well. As you watch it, ask yourself what message it holds for women.

I rest my case.

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.