When i thought about this title, I had a very simple idea in mind; marveling at how comfortable average spanish women look in their daily dressing modes…… No one cares, no one stares, no one gives obscene remarks,… it is almost impressive!

Obviously i am excluding immigrants and minorities in this statement. I am also excluding the contravery of the niqab and the hijab in Europe, in addition to the contraversy that is created by different things such as German Ad Liaison Dangereuse Sexiness for everyone, which left me completely confused. Mostly because it was one of few things i did not know how i felt about… did i like it? did i hate it? was it offensive? was it empowering? What was it?

Let´s put all contraversy in Europe aside and bring the focus to our side of the world. It hit me that notions of human rights place a high value on free speech in our side of the world while barely addressing clothing.

Freedom of dress is just another freedom we lack in Jordan. However purely by social and self imposed restrictions… (like most things really) The thing is we don´t see freedom of dress as an essential aspect of free expression. We see it as part of a collective identity that is imposed either by peers or by authoritarian systems. (this  include both parts of Amman).

I am not sure why two particular stories occur to me now. A young woman reported a case of sexual harrassment by a university professor. It truly surprised me that her male peers said that this happened because she did not wear a jilbab (she adopts the headscarf and is actually conservative… I mean she is not one of those who cover their hair but forget to cover other parts of their bodies).  She was hurt by the comments then: she wondered what did her society want more of her.

The other story took place a few months ago, when a young friend was  heart broken because  her mother would not let her buy a particular brand. When questioned about the reason she wanted to buy that brand. She admitted that if she did not wear it, her peers would marginalize her and belittle her. Needless to say the brand in question was outside her parents cultural league. Worst yet, it was neither her style nor her passion to wear as was expected… but she felt obliged to wear it in order to appease and to fit in.

These two girls can not practice any form of freedom of self expression even though they are both conforming to society. One to peers and the other to a patriarchal system.

It is interesting to me that this paricular type of oppression affects women more than men and i wonder if it would have had more value on the agenda of fight for freedom if men were affected more?

No resolutions today… the whole post if a fleeting thought.

 The comment brought up a conversation that keeps repeating itself in my life: Women and property. 

 Stories about women and property

 In a conversation I had with N. couple of years ago, she complained about this particular issue. N and her husband made an agreement that anything they will purchase after they got married, should be registered in both their names, regardless of who brings the bread home. She felt, at that point, that she had given up her career to take care of him and the children, and felt that she deserved to share his money and his property. She complained however, that every time they purchased something, things worked out in a way that the property ended up to be registered in his name alone!

E. on the other hand, was getting engaged. Her fiancé was about to purchase their dream house, she suggested that she should pay part of it and co-own it with him. But the idea was shot down before it even got the chance to reach his parents…. He told her clearly, that his family would find this offensive.  It would have given the impression they could not afford buying the house and therefore she had to help… her intention was to co-own the property that was going to live in anyway.   (She ended up buying a piece of land somewhere with the money she was going to contribute to the house)

L. is a third example…. She comes from one of these business oriented families. The family buys property and land for girls in the family in return for their share of the family business. However, they don’t allow them to be part of the business…

What do they say?

Would women give up their marriage or stop getting married if they have lands?

Hala (house wife, 54)

“Bullshit! Women have the right to own land. Fatima, the prophet’s daughter, owned a small garden, and she stuck to Ali till the end.  Why can’t other women do the same?”

 Kifah (counsellor , 39)

A lot of women choose husbands based on their financial status. If they own property, the pressure to choose financial support becomes much less, and therefore they choose based on compatibility. Therefore I think It is the opposite, if women are financially independent, the quaity of their choises improves.)

 Maria (teacher, 61)

“This is the masculine perspective. A woman would never leave a husband that she respects and loves for land. At a certain age, companionship becomes the most important thing for women… However, maybe men have been getting away with a lot in the name of financial support. The question that should be asked… do they deserve to be with the woman they are with? Only independent women can answer this question.”

Lara (Marketing guru 26)

I don’t believe women would stop getting married if they own land, or maybe this is the way things are here in Jordan.

I think men feel threatened that women can leave them any time since they can become independent after owning a piece of land. This is only in the minds of men where they should be the providers, but women in nature need to settle down and have a family, it’s instinctive. However, if women live in an environment where they need to rebel and retaliate then this would be their chance to prove that they do not need men.

Either way it’s good to show men that women are not to be taken for granted, to sleep with one eye open

 Hamza ( salesman, 24)

It is true. We know how women think (so emotionally ) and they have speedy reactions. If she gets angry with her husband for any small reason, she will leave, because she has the land and can live alone.

 Issam (IT guru, 31)

I can’t help but laugh. Please excuse me but this is the silliest logic I’ve heard for a long time.
While financial dependence on the man is dominating in the marriage relation, I can’t see how financial well being of a woman could lead to a tendency to abstain from a relationship or marriage.

 I would like to take the thought a step back, a peek in the recent history.

Women property rights in the ottoman empire

According to Amira El-Azhary Sonbol in her study Women of  the Jordan (2003), Ottoman records show that women’s property rights were implemented at all levels of the Islamic legal system. They show that “no one, including the husbands or even fathers, could make use of women’s property without their consent, and women appealed to the courts when anyone tampered with their assets.”

It seems that women’s property rights started declining with the European colonization.  Women got caught between the western imperialism and the conservative Islam that started spreading faster and faster.

Back to today’s world

I no longer think it is about women at all… I think it is about the land.  I just learnt that some tribes have an unwritten agreement, where, people should not sell land outside the tribe. Land equals status and bargaining power, therefore should stay within the tribe. The problem in the case of women is when they marry outside the tribe. In that case, land will be no longer the property of the tribe.

According to a survey that was conducted by freedomhouse, women’s access to inheritance, housing, and property is affected by their educational level, family support systems, economic status, and access to legal information and mechanisms. One thing for sure, women don’t get their share of inheritance or property.  In some cases, when they are not financially independent, and don’t have any providers, they cede their share of family land to their brothers, in return of economic support.

The problem is that governments do not take aggressive steps to enforce women’s inheritance and property rights and often allow abuses to go unpunished.

 On Thursday night, she was perfectly ok, and in a split of a second on Friday morning, we almost lost her.

 Teta has been mentioned in many posts.   Mostly, because of her controversial character; she is the matriarch, the sun that stands at the center of my family’s universe.  She is the kind of person that you can’t ignore; you must acknowledge her presence if you come across her.  And that I do.

Since my dad is the eldest son, she has moved to live in with us a few years ago.  At the beginning she shared my room. When I reached a point of either going crazy or committing a crime I moved out of my room into a state of homelessness.  I got my own room two years ago.

Teta is not chic in anyway… she is oblivious to the fact that other people live with her, and does as she wants without even wondering if what she does affects other people. She interferes in things that have nothing to do with her, and asks the most embarrassing questions in the most inappropriate times, as if it is the most normal thing in the world… and I can’t help but be amused by her incorrectness.

 But this is not all.

My grandmother is the ultimate queen of manipulation … she ALWAYS gets what she wants, I sometimes feel squashed under her constant demands and her unstoppable nagging.   If she wants something; it seems that it is the only thing in the world that really matters.  So usually the whole family ends up succumbing to her demands, if only to stop her. 

Among her tools are:  sulking, brooding, huffing, and taking the family in torturous guilt trips, dropping casual hints about the days, her sons and daughters were born and how painful that was! 

Yesterday, I stood outside her room at the hospital and watched her frail body.  A sense of love swept over me.   My tiny ferocious grandmother; she has always had the ability to shake her world and change it to shape it as she saw fit.  She has never allowed anyone to make her feel inferior because of her gender, even though she was not allowed to go to school because of her gender.  She has always spoken with so much confidence, reducing her illiteracy to a tiny insignificant obstacle. She has always been many things… but strength is the one constant attribute in her character.

 Hope you get better soon teta!

At this point my post starts suffering an identity crisis. The post is about two completely different ideas, but they are intertwined in a way that makes it complicated for my, already, complicated brain to choose which idea to go with.  The first one is about unlived adolescence in Jordan, and the other one is about the dating scene in Amman.

What I would do is explore one idea today and defer the other one to the next post. Hopefully they will converge eventually in something that makes sense.

 Women’s Juvenile expressions

A few years ago, I was working on a women empowerment project in East Amman.  The project involved asking a number of adult women to write their own short bios. They loved the exercise. I mean, it is seldom that anyone gets interested in them as persons.  We worked slowly on developing the information, and when they were finally done, they handed me hard copies of the bios.  I found a common feature in all the documents that sort of confused me.  These women used colors to draw small hearts and flowers around their documents… some of them even went as far as sticking cartoon characters and I love you stickers on their bios! 

The pattern used was familiar to me… it was that of 11 year old girls!

These were the expressions of adult women, who had never had the chance to express themselves when they were 11. At that age, they were expected to be women and house wives.  These women lost their freedom to go out and make friends and be juvenile when they hit puberty. At that age, they started learning how to cook and clean and take care of younger children… they were no longer children… and were expected to let go of their childhood earlier that they needed to.

What happened to them?  Well, their unfulfilled desires stayed with them through their adulthood… leaving them emotionally immature and unfulfilled, which means unable to fulfill their husbands’ unfulfilled emotional desires.

I soon realized that this was a lifestyle and not random expressions… the way they carried out their lives had something childish about it… they behaved childishly, the language they used, and their decisions were based on childish basis as well. 

Men’s juvenile expressions

I imagined that men are better off… but actually I realized that it is not at all the case…look around, a lot of men end up spending their Thursday nights driving around Duwwar Abdoun..    Men in their teens, twenties driving around, chatting up girls and acting idiotically! Older men would probably be found in night clubs doing exactly the same… <madas’ comment> I am not saying everyone is like that… but a good number is </madas’ comment> 

For many complicated reasons, these men were not allowed to explore with their sexuality at their adolescence years… and they ended up exploring that when they are older… only at this age it is no longer innocent.

My whole point here is that these two people in the car… would not sit in a car in the middle of the night, if they had the chance to do that when they were in their teens or early twenties… khalas they would have already got it out of their systems by this age…

However I don’t think that this is the only reason why men and women in Amman end up making out in cars.  … I think there are other reasons including  not having places to do that in…

Which takes me to my next question… what are the features of the dating scene in Amman?

I quite often find myself being swayed into situations where I did not want to be in the first place, simply because I did not know how to say ‘NO’. As a matter of fact, I am so bad at saying no, that I looked into my dictionary recently only to realize that the word has disappeared! I erased it, not realizing the dramatic effects, evading this word have on my life.

Let me give an example here. I have been part of a project since last May. The project will end in October in–sha-Allah. And when it does, I will drive to the airport road, stop at the nearest jar market, buy the biggest jar and break it then and there! (In my home, we use this as an expression when unwanted guests leave…This project started feeling like an unwanted guest!)

The reason behind my frustration is that I was supposed to work for 30 days, but I have already worked 90… but…why? … every time, they call me and ask me, nicely to do something, I find myself avoiding the scary ‘NO’. I have been doing tasks that have nothing to do with me or my experience, tasks that I don’t even have time for…. tasks that  no one wants to do, so they throw them on the silly girl who says yes every time!

People, avoid saying ‘NO’ because they do not like the idea of confrontation, or maybe they just want to avoid the anxiety that is involved in refusing a request. In this particular case, I don’t say NO because I want to leave a good impression, sine these are the organizations i would work with as a freelancer….  But i think that i learnt my lesson… next time i will negotiate beforehand.

Yet, I wonder if things are more complicated than this…I wonder if there is more to it than the reasons I mentioned here…

Could it be that we are not built culturally to say “NO” … I am talking about hundreds of years of inherited traditions as Bedouins and travellers… Let me explain a bit… as we know, respect for the hardships of the desert has filled Bedouin culture with a celebrated sense of hospitality…  This generosity survived during our cultural evolution and with time it became so embedded in our collective memory that we forgot about our need and our right to say ‘NO’?

That was a farfetched thought? ok… Let me come up with another possible reason..I grew up in what I call a culture of consensus; the impenetrable shield of good manners and conventions. I was trained from girlhood to serve and please and abide by prevailing social norms.  The word ‘NO’ simply did not fit in that picture of loveliness and peace.  I say ‘YES’ to others because I want to please them, and ‘YES’ always marks the beginning of my problems; why? Well there is a trap that I manage to overlook every time I agree to a request. Eventually I won’t be able to deliver, I will let people down and I will end up losing my credibility… and of course no one will be happy.  

The one million dinars question is how can I say ‘NO’ without looking like a wretched human being?

 What do they say?

 Laila says that the answer itself does not matter… it is the attitude.

“Never commit, always say you will check your calendar… and that you will get back to them later…”

 Dina on the other hand suggested something along these lines..

 “Attach to it a difficult circumstance r condition” she said… “like ohhh… sure… but… if it would only take a couple of  hours”

 Omar advises

Don’t do it, but provide alternatives. (“I can’t do that task today, but how about next Friday,”  hopefully it would be too late!

 Good ideas… will start using them… and hopefully with time i would learn how to insert back NO into the dictionary.

My grandmother, a tiny ferocious woman, is the matriarch, the mover who stands at the center of my father and his brothers’ universe. They never could liberate themselves from her iron grip… and as a result ended up living turbulent lives with their own wives, who have never exactly met my grandmother’s expectations. After all, she did not choose any of them, so even if they were angels she would not have approved! Ya3ni a classical mother in law and daughter in law scenario in this side of the world.

I grew up having negative feelings towards my meddling grandmother, and since I avoided speaking about my family as a teenager, I assumed our situation was unique… which made me feel isolated. But then something amazing happened… I grew up only to realize that my grandmother is not unique at all… as a matter of fact she is so un-unique, it is not even funny. Worse yet, her generation have moved the knowledge to the next generations. Younger women around Jordan today are variant replicas of women like my grandmother.

Mothers on the lookout for brides using facebook!

Recently, I have been hearing countless stories of mothers on the lookout for the perfect bride for their sons: the process often resembles shopping for a good deal. I have been approached several times by these kinds of women to the mortification of my mother and the delight of my grandmother. Latest one, through facebook! …She has been following my facebook profile to see what kind of photos I upload and how my status changes. For some odd reason, I was deemed worthy! I told her mischievously “you should check my blog” surprise….surprise… she did not call again! Apparently, this is the new thing… mothers using technology to go through suitable brides for their sons..(Fancy, eh?)

Yesterday, my (girl) cousins came over to have iftar with us. They are at that age, where mothers scan them. Muna was making fun of a distant cousin who went to visit them a couple of days ago, and when he was asked whether he preferred Atayef with nuts or cheese, he answered “I prefer what my mother chooses for me!” with a wink. Little she knew, when she told the story, that this was not an innocent remark, but a way of warning them that the tigress was hunting!

 Muna’s remarks piqued my anthropological curiosity. Why do women have such a strong hold on their sons in our side of the world?

First reason comes to mind is that the responsibilities of bringing up children have traditionally fallen upon women alone. Fathers’ interference did not exceed being the punisher and the provider for both the mother and the children! So men end up developing unbalanced relationships with the parents. They both fear and respect the authoritarian father, but completely adore the fragile mother… who used female sensuality and manipulation as part of numerous tools to keep her children under her thumb.

Samar gave me a different perspective into the story… in Jordan, there is no comprehensive social system that takes care of citizens, so people can’t make it without pap’s money. She explained that when she got married, almost five years and two kids ago, her in laws paid for everything, including wedding fees, shabkeh, house, and car…everything… “If they did not” she said, “we would still be trying to save money to afford getting married”. Luckily her mother in law liked her. “If she did not like me, they would not have paid a penny,… and my mother in law would have convinced him to leave me by tears, drama, fake sicknesses, Divine anger and threats to kill herself”.

In face of these lethal tools ….how can any sane son break the umbilical cord?

I am Reading “Taxi” and “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. I have been avoiding this book for years, but khalas it is after me… Taxi is not bad… I love this generation of contemporary Egyptian writers…. It is refreshing.

On a different note… I have become addicted to one particular song. It is called Sangre Gitana y Mora. Um Kulthoum’s Alf Leila u Leila By two gypsy singers Lole y Manuel… Fine would be one way of describing it!

This conversation lingered in a hidden corner of my subconscious. It resurfaced again as I saw a glimpse of Catherine Zeta Jones (on TV of course), who is famous for her prenup agreement among other things.  Her prenup with “Wall Street” star Michael Douglas entitles her to $2.8 million per each year of marriage.

For some reason, my friend’s perception bothered me, since it is a barometer to what the society thinks…. In my family the mu2akhar is around 5 thousand Dinars. This is the standard number among many Palestinian families…  now I will get back to this number in a moment, but now I will introduce a new thread.

Usually, both husbands and wives work , in many cases women give up their careers to take care of children… when they buy property, it is almost always registered in the man’s name, even though they both have contributed to the marital life… even if the wife did not contribute financially. In case of a divorce, the man’s only financial obligation to his wife is the 5000 dinars mentioned above! Or there is an even better deal for men.

khlo3 divorce!

In that case,  she gives up even these 5000 dinars! And the man walks away with everything… regardless of the number of years they lived together, or whose fault it is that things go to that point….

I look at Catherine Zeta Jones and almost feel jealous, not because she gets that much money, I mean Michael  can afford it,  but because she lives in a system that respects a  woman’s rights to protect her own interests in case of a divorce…  and in Jordan,  if the laws don’t subjugate women, then society will  most definitely take care of it.

Brilliant, sah?

On a different note, I just finished the historian… I think it cured me from my love for vampires for a while! It was one of those long books that get you lost in details, which makes them difficult to follow at some points.  In that sense it kind of reminded me of  Orhan’s Pamuk ‘s the Black book… it was a good book, that lost me several times. I finished the historian because it was a good read, in the sense that author Elizabeth Kostova did a fabulous job in giving it roots in medieval history… she kept referring to historic events during the Ottoman Empire time… and managed to build her story based entirely on historic facts, which made me wonder , only  for a split of a second, if vampires really exist!

I was walking with my sister in Souq Jara this last Friday, right at the door we saw a woman pushing a baby stroller trying to get on the pavement, but could not.  Two foreign fellows jumped to help her. She smiled, thanked them and went on with her baby.  My sister was extremely impressed, and when I asked her, she explained that Arab guys would be reluctant to help, as these foreign men did. I was very surprised; I am so used to hanging out with gallant men, that I did not even notice it.

However, it seems like I hang out with guys who belong to a dying breed. They open doors for women, they give up their seats when a woman comes in any setup and in buses (not that we use buses in Jordan to my chagrin), and they would not mind fighting someone if they offended one of us.

My sister and I went through our men folk and put them in two categories, those who would help and those who don’t.  One thing came out clearly; most of the men who would help have lived abroad at some point of their lives…

Now, since I am not hasty at forming judgments, especially when it comes to a delicate matter, such as Jordanian men’s honour, I decided to investigate the observation further, and therefore decided to go to the lion’s den and get the information directly there… this means, I asked a few men about their opinions on the matter.

The men I asked all admitted to their lack of chivalry, they defend their position as a natural consequence of women reactions….

 The idea of male chivalry, as Moe explained, makes many women nervous, when we try to carry a heavy bag, they look at us and say coldly “ I can carry it myself” and therefore, we let them carry their heavy bags on their own. Moe explained that when he does an act of chivalry, he is aware that the woman he is helping is not weak, and that she is as capable as he is… for him it is a simple show of respect… the problem is that women get very offended by his show of respect,  that he feels they don’t deserve it.

N-man on the other hand told me about an incident when he was walking ahead of two young women, he kept the door open for them to walk in. When they finally arrived, they did not even give him a second glance. They walked on so rudely as if he was the door man, whose job was to keep the door open for them.  N-man explained that it was not only humiliating, it actually irritated him…

it takes a certain level of spitefulness for human beings not to look at someone who is being kind to them… 

N-man is just another man who believes Jordanian women do not deserve gallantry!

Sam provided a third perspective… he saw a woman carrying a baby and couple of bags, when he offered to help, she thought he was flirting with her, and started shouting at him in the middle of the road…  he laughed as he explained that he almost started cursing her, but instead cursed himself for helping the likes of her… he walked fuming and promised himself never to help another woman… he joked..

I really don’t need to get into some honour related case… leave me alone!

When asked, why do men in the west help women, Omar explained they don’t always do, some men feel that if women really want to be treated equally, they need to stop expecting men to treat them specially.

N-man on the other hand pointed out that gallantry is something they learn at schools or observe other men do… so in reality, it is expected from him to keep the door open for a woman, but in return she is expected to acknowledge his gentle mannish act.  He says that he reverts back to his chivalrous nature the moment he leaves Jordan…

After talking to several people, I was really beginning to feel sorry for men.  Some of them seemed to be the victims of the tyranny of bitchy Jordanian women, who are not capable of acknowledging an act  of kindness, or a show of respect, even when it is staring at the them in the eye.

Most of the guys I spoke to this week agreed that to some extent chivalry is dead.

That is a disheartening fact for us ladies because believe it or not, we’ve killed it.

 I just discovered the funniest comedy ever, it is called arrested development! it is truly hilarious!

I was extremely impressed by the 7 young women and 3 young men who made up the Tunisian Group… as a matter of fact a lot of people were. These women were all intelligent, intellectually inspiring and delightfully full of life.  Their ideas were creative; you knew they would deliver when they promise… they were simply empowered.

During the last 5 years of youth work around the world, I have been puzzled at how advanced women from Arab Maghreb are in comparison to us… Jordanian women.   I wonder why it is not that often that we meet Jordanian women who are empowered, intelligent and intellectually impressive… I am not saying there are no Jordanian women who are like that… on the contrary there are many… but they are the many exceptions of the rule.  

The answer was in Al Ghad newspaper yesterday in a depressing article about domestic abuse. Let’s take a quick look at the numbers… from 2003-2008:

·         442 women were raped!

·         183 women almost raped

·         1379 women sexually assaulted ( different from rape and almost rape)

·         1099 physically abused

·         1200 young women had to go through virginity tests! (Last year only)! Am I imagining things or was this a jahiliya practice that forbidden by Islam?

I am not talking about honour crimes, or non-reported abuse. I am not even talking about the injustice of divorce or child custody or any of these issues…. I am simply talking about extreme cases that made it to the media, because they were extreme.  The excuse we all use is Shari’a law… which ironically was designed to guarantee women’s rights…However the biggest problem is not Shari’a law.. it is the fact that that any progressive local laws that are designed to protect women are miraculously not reinforced… what is the point of having laws in a country when there is no rule of law? What stops us from becoming a lynching nation?

Let’s take a look at the Moroccan Mudawana just to see how they have given women rights but respected Shari’a law. Moroccan’s describe this law as follows:

It is a modern Family Law consistent with the tolerant spirit of Islam and “lifting the iniquity imposed on women, protecting children’s rights, and safeguarding men’s dignity.”

This law includes the following articles… which I found fascinating… but what is great about the mudawana is that it is enforced

Equality:

o  Husband and wife share joint responsibility for the family;

o  The wife is no longer legally obliged to obey her husband;

o  The adult woman is entitled to self-guardianship, rather than that of a male family member, and may exercise it freely and independently;

o  The minimum age of marriage is 18 for both men and women.

Divorce:

o  The right to divorce is a prerogative of both men and women, exercised under judicial supervision;

o  The principle of divorce by mutual consent is established.

Polygamy:

o  Polygamy is subject to the judge’s authorization and to stringent legal conditions, making the practice nearly impossible;

o  The woman has the right to impose a condition in the marriage contract requiring that her husband refrain from taking other wives;

o  If there is no pre-established condition, the first wife must be informed of her husband’s intent to remarry, the second wife must be informed that her husband-to-be is already married, and moreover, the first wife may ask for a divorce due to harm suffered.

Enforcement of Law:

o  The Family Law assigns a key role to the judiciary in upholding the rule of law and provides for the public prosecutor to be a party to every legal action involving the enforcement of Family Law stipulations.

Children’s Rights:

o  The woman is given the possibility of retaining custody of her child even upon remarrying or moving out of the area where her husband lives;

o  The child’s right to acknowledgment of paternity is protected in that case that the marriage has not been officially registered.

Maybe a couple of women should die for the laws are enforced… oops, they already do! I wonder if it is time for Jordanian women to fight for their own rights?

He is an A-hole. He does not respect you, leave him!

Now, my opinion has changed dramatically… it has become:

Where is your self confidence?

Elsa on the other hand used to hate it when her partner (ex-husband now…) used to check women out, especially when they were out and she was with him. This was always the base for an argument… she told him repeatedly that it made her feel uncomfortable, she felt it was not respectful of her as a women… his standard answer was a cold “it meant nothing”

Her mother used to tell her that being upset was not about him staring but it was about being insecure in her relationship…. which obviously she was not… and rightly so, since he ended up cheating on her…
Today, when she is with her boyfriend, she truly does not mind if he checks someone out,… which he seldom does, … and when he does, it is done discreetly and respectfully. Actually, it is ironic, that she would point out that a girl is cute…… what would he do in this case? He does nothing…. absolutely nothing… he might mumble something funny and move on.

So I guess her mother’s comment was right after all…. It really is not about who does what… it is about trust… if you trust the person, if you are secure about the person you are with… checking out other people is fine. The point is both men and women look every now and then… it is no big deal, but what is not normal is for people to stare and comment EVERY time some member of the opposite sex walks in a room. Which really was the case with Elsa’s husband, it used to make all of her friends uncomfortable… he would scan any woman’s body rudely…it was disgusting!

Why do men check out women?

I really don’t want to provide excuses for Arab men…they get away with too much as it is…. but let’s look into evolution here. We need to remember that even though we moved from the caves into modern buildings around Jordan… and we started eating cooked mansaf around tables in different Jordanians cities and villages instead of eating raw meet around the fire in the caves, we still share DNA with animals.

We should never forget that the aim of the human race is to spread DNA for the survival of the race! A guy, having to do little work to give birth to a kid, would be more likely to pass on his DNA if he mated with several women… Is this all? Well of course not. There are other reasons as well.. For example the fact that society celebrates men’s behaviours… I mean it is completely ok for a man to look around, but it would be viewed as completely unnatural and maybe a little sick for a woman to do the same…

I would also imagine that it is because the way women react to it… A friend used to let her husband know how cute the waiter is whenever she caught him looking at other women… she would tip these handsome waiters handsomely, and the sting of spending unnecessary money was enough to teach the husband not to look when she is around!

She still tips people handsomely every now and then, after 13 years of marriage!

Can you think of other reasons why men look at other women??

I wonder who would get upset by this video… Michelle Obama or Carla Bruni?