Tracygosnow's travel blogs:
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Fair and Lovely
Entry 16 of 53 | show all | print this entry |
Not too much to report. I went to Baby Fish again today to relax and swim. I want you all to know that I certainly do feel pangs of guilt whilst lying on a lounge chair looking out over turqouise water and desert mountains in the distance...but then they go as quickly as they came. But really, I have always had a feeling that I am not a woman of leisure and I have concluded that I am definitely NOT. Yes, I do often crave normalcy and structure and the craziness that generally is my life. But I remind myself that I have worked my ass off for quite some time and deserve this last fling before returning to the real world. I do plan to get myself a little job here though, but cannot do so until after I return from Palestine as it'd be lame to start a job and have to leave in 3 weeks.
But otherwise, things are going good overall. It's funny that my being American automatically makes me the resident expert on hip-hop and rap music/culture. There are quite a few little hard-core rap/hip-hop followers running around Dahab and they come to me for the latest in news and to discuss the East coast/West coast rap fued. While I do like the music and listen to it a lot, I am by no means an expert on the going-ons of the industry. But I try to provide what information I can and even listen to their attempts to freestyle rap in their broken English. It's really quite entertaining and endearing. One guy in particular has a few clothing items sent him by relatives in Detroit and NYC that he loves to show off to me.
I saw an interesting commercial on TV today. Those who know me well know that I have an, er, obsession with skin color. I've always wanted to be darker and have hated my whiteness and red hair and freckles for as long as I can remember. I guess it's why I am usually attracted to darker men as well, I am perhaps trying to make up for something I lack. Alan (my ex from Honduras) used to tell me how 'clean' my white skin looked and he loved it. In Honduras, it was a status symbol to be white as dark skin meant you were poor and had to walk in the hot sun or labor outdoors in the fields while the lighter skinned Hondurans could afford to ride in cars and not have to work outside. True, the few occassions when I hung with the Embassy brats at the one swanky club in Tegus, the Honduran clientel was of a lighter complexion. In Egypt, there is a myriad of skin colors (well, various shades of brown I guess). Anwar in particular is pretty dark and is referred to by many in Dahab as a "black man." For him it's a sense of pride as he is from Upper Egypt (which is actually in the south of Egypt closer to Sudan, it's 'upper' b/c it's the upper part of the Nile which flows northward), and his dark skin symbolizes this heritage for him.
Ok, so back to the commercial. In America, most people seek beautifully tanned and bronzed skin (myself included) as it symbolizes youth and health and vibrance and whatnot--even though that same skin will look like wrinkled leather in about 20 years...but America is an instant gratification sort of society. So this commercial comes on for a product called "Fair and Lovely." I'm thinking it's just skin cream until it shows the progressive photos of a woman's skin getting lighter and lighter. This is a cream to make you more WHITE. So here I am struggling to be darker while some Middle Eastern women seek to be lighter. I guess it's the same old thing everywhere--wanting to have what we weren't given naturally. Although I must boast that I am sporting a lovely tan line these days. Instead of being butt-ass white, I am just well...white. With some freckles thrown in which don't bother me too much these days (yes, I once did try to rub lemon juice on my skin to get rid of them and found it to be too much work and gave up).
That's all for today. I hope everyone is well wherever they may be.
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