The Arab Woman and I

Mona Fayad’s The Arab Woman and I is a very interesting article because it explores outside perceptions from society of who you are supposed to be. These outside perceptions use stereotypes of peoples/cultures in order to categorize how everyone should be/act. For example, Fayad, a native of Syria, feels weighed down by ideas of how Arab women are. Either they are Faceless Veiled Women or they are Belly Dancers. There really is not that much room for an in-between or for a woman who does not fit these specific roles. Fayad feels obliged to slip into a stereotyped “Arab woman” persona because “to talk about an ordinary Arab woman, one who wears pants or plain dress or a suit and walks around looking like everyone else is uninteresting, to say the least. I feel pressured to produce something special, something different” (112).

This way of thinking does not take into account that everyone is an individual with his or her own personality. Also, not everyone wants or does fit into these specific ideas of how people should be. I really like what Fayad wrote on page 112: “each Arab woman must represent herself, with the range of identities that include Syrian or Saudi Arabian, Berber or Copt, Bedouin or society woman from Beirut, Druze or Alawite, villager in the Upper Nile or Minister of Culture from Damascus”. This quote shows that everyone is his or her own person. Also, there are so many people in the world that if we use just one person (or a small handful of people) for a base line of how everyone else is we are committing a serious injustice to our society. When people do that they lose out on really getting to know other people. The beauty of the world is its diversity, which means everyone is a little bit different compared to everyone else.  If everyone were all the same life would just be so boring!