I know there’s a superstition about wearing a wedding dress before your wedding day, but I have worn quite a few wedding dresses since moving to Cairo. At one point, I was up to 20 wedding gowns a week. The irony is that I have never been married (despite the endless marriage proposals from Egyptian men). I simply model wedding dresses in my spare time, when I’m not performing or teaching belly dance.
Let me clarify. I am NOT a bridal model. It’s just that I am a bit more ‘well rounded than all the Eastern European girls who saturate the modeling market in Egypt, so I get called for a lot of shoots which require a fuller-figured woman. That means lingerie and wedding shoots. As I refuse to model lingerie (especially in Egypt), I stick to occasional bridal modeling. It’s kind of ironic in light of my phobia of all things marriage, especially poofy white dresses. And boy are they poofy here. The minute I step into one of those monstrous things, I look like I’m drowning in a sea of white tulle and chiffon. Not to mention it is impossible to maneuver in them. Now I know why the Egyptian brides usually look scared and pissed.
To be fair, it is not entirely the dress’ fault. A lot of that pissed look has to do with Egyptian makeup, particularly eyebrow makeup. You know, those ultra-straight, diagonal eyebrows that make you look like you have the letter V on your forehead. The ones that start closer to the eyelid than the natural brow bone permits, and run away from your face at a 45° angle. Now, with all due respect to Egyptian makeup artistry, ‘V-45’ eyebrows make you look angry. Every time an Egyptian makeup artist does my face, someone asks me why I’m angry. It never fails. This just goes to show how intense those brows are. They are so intense that in addition to making me look upset, they change the shape of my face. No exaggeration. I often don’t recognize or even like myself after being made up this way.
Fortunately, I don’t take these shoots too seriously. Egyptian bridal modeling is not where my heart is. For me, it’s basically Halloween with a pay check. But for others, namely thousands of Eastern European girls who make careers out of this in Egypt, looking ugly is a serious matter. I have even seen some of them cry. I remember doing one bridal shoot with a beautiful Russian model in a bridal beauty center. Both of us had been made up in the typical baladi way, and thus transformed into different people. But while I found it funny, she cried. She couldn’t stand looking so hideous. And believe me, we did look hideous. We both had jet black V-45 brows, foundation that was three shades lighter than our natural skin tones, at least four different colors on our eyes, fake moles, and bright fuschia lips. I don’t even want to get into what our hair looked like.
What amazes me is the bold contrast in beauty standards across cultures. Typically, what Americans and Europeans perceive to be tacky, Egyptians find beautiful. That os why this look is replicated every time I do a model shoot in Cairo, be it bridal or otherwise. They even made me look this way when I modeled a line of Mickey Mouse kids’ pajamas!
The last shoot I did a week ago was particularly brow raising (pun intended). The owner of this baladi beauty center hired models and a film crew so he could broadcast his makeup and hairstyling services for brides. The video of us was being aired on television stations throughout Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, and parts of Europe. Supposedly. Anyway, when it was time for the makeup artist (who was also the owner of the salon), to do my brows, things got a bit ugly.
First, he covered my natural brows with thick, dark brown lines starting at the top of my nose bone and running away from my face on a steep diagonal. Then, he asked me to close my eyes. I obeyed, upon which he used a sharp razor to slice off the parts of my brows that were not covered by the harsh diagonal line!
As soon as I realized what he had done, it took everything inside me to hold back the expletives racing through my mind. I was infuriated that he shaved my eyebrows on camera without even asking me. I mean, it’s not like I don’t need my brows, or like I intend to keep drawing diagonal lines on my face until the hair grows back, whenever that may be. But because they were filming us live, I could not protest. Looking back on it, I wish I had flipped out on camera. That would have added some much-needed comic relief to the whole fiasco.
There I was, on display for the entire Middle East, propped in a salon chair wearing an enormous wedding dress and a white bath towel to cover my cleavage(!). What was even more ridiculous was the way the makeup artist turned my face in different directions by pulling my nose! All this for $50 bucks. That is slightly more than I make dancing one show at the Nile Memphis. But at least on the boat, I’m doing what I love. It sure beats spending seven hours wrapped in a wedding dress and bath towel while this stooge shaved my eyebrows and pulled my nose in front of the entire Arab world.
To be honest, I’m not sure what upset me more—the shaved eyebrows, the nose pulling, or the fact that I had to cover my cleavage with a bath towel because we were broadcasting in Saudi Arabia. Why bother having me wear a wedding dress with a plunging neckline in the first place? Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the camera crew suggested that the makeup artist wedge his fingers through a foam pedicure toe separator so that his hand would not come in contact with my face when he applied the makeup. Religious people would not appreciate the idea of a strange man’s hand touching the bride’s face for any reason.
Come on people, Egypt hasn’t gone full Taliban yet.
That was it. My (apparently very high) tolerance for bullshit had been maxed out. Thankfully, the makeup artist balked at the toe separator idea. There was, however, one technique that he insisted not be demonstrated on camera—blowing powdered glitter on my fuschia-stained lips. Too suggestive.
Next up was my hair. Tight Shirley Temple banana curls paralyzed by hairspray. Three black sponges the size of oranges were then fixed to the back of my head with rubber bands, to which the stylist pinned all my curls. More hairspray. My head must have doubled in size. As with the makeup, the hair session was televised, so I tried my best to contain my laughter. Especially when the hairstylist repeatedly put his hand out to the assistant and asked for ‘penis’. Pins. >D
It was five in the morning when we finished. And thank God for that. I did not want any living creature on the streets of Cairo looking at me looking like this. When I got home, it took more than an hour to wipe off all the makeup, and to undo and wash my hair, which was sprayed solid. Not prepared to see what I looked like minus ¾ of my eyebrows, I tried to avoid washing the eyebrow area. Alas, the sharp diagonal lines became squiggly streaks with the rest of the makeup running down my soapy face. Words cannot describe what I looked or felt like when I saw my makeup-free face in the mirror. Plus, I worried about all the sweat that would roll into my eyes while dancing. All I can say is that I had never wanted big bushy eyebrows more in my life.
