After living in the Middle East for about a month, I have noticed that many foreigners look at things differently here. Isabella Archer, a 19-year-old UNC student, said she is hardly fazed when she walks to school with “what seems like ninety percent of the women she meets covered from head to toe.” Others, like Indian American Rahkee Devasthali, said they don’t mind eating fast food that tastes nothing like American fast food. I have personally come to enjoy the almost complete absence of English; something I thought would surely cause a break down during my first day here.
But there is one thing many foreigners sill cannot understand about Jordan. If a woman is not covered like a traditional Jordanian Muslim, then they are almost certainly stared or even glared at by onlookers. “How can the same Jordanian guys outside that listen to “Smack That” by Akon and “Get Low” by Lil’ Jon and the East Side Boys stare at me because my hair is uncovered and part of my arm is showing? “ said Rachel White, a 24-year-old North Carolinian. And it’s not just men. The same girls who watch Lebanese music videos that sometimes resemble soft porn stare disapprovingly at my legs because my longest skirts stop about six-inches above my ankles.
When I asked my Jordanian my friends about this inconsistency, many responded with the same old clichés. “Oh, most guys are pigs,” or “Girls are funny like that,” they said. However, I believe the answer is not that simple. It’s more than a personal or cultural opinion that it involves adjusting your comfort zone.
On the Fourth of July, my American roommate and I decided to go see a Palestinian rap group at a local youth hangout called Books@Café. When our cab driver decided to take us to Starbuck’s Café instead of Books@Café, we left the cab and went to a really awesome restaurant called the Blue Fig Cafe. The cafe has cuisines from all around the world, constantly shows off local artwork and plays an international mix of jazz and soul. I ordered a “Tribute to New Orleans” (a burger and fries with bbq sauce and Dijon mustard) and a piece of “New York cheese cake” and felt like a pretty content expatriate.
We had been there for ten minutes when we noticed something very peculiar: we were the most conservatively dressed in the restaurant. Our long sleeve shirts, jackets and long pants looked odd next to other girls’ tube tops and tank tops. There wasn’t a veil in sight. “What are these girls thinking?” I asked my roommate. “Why are they dressed like they are heading for a club?”
Then, it hit me. Only after one month, I was so used to seeing conservative attire that I had unknowingly judged what my mind registered as inappropriate for the culture. It was not that I really disapproved of their clothing (I wear tank tops all the time in the U.S.); it was just that their dress caught me off guard. Likewise, when some Jordanians pass a foreigner on the street, something about the encounter may come off as unusual, resulting in the foreigner-dreaded stare.
I have seen similar situations in North Carolina, too. Some churches members disapprove of women wearing short skirts and men wearing jeans while at worship. But while some church-going Americans define “appropriate attire” differently depending on the location, many Jordanian Muslims define “appropriate attire” based on only two locations: home among family members and everywhere else.
No matter where we come from, we all have different levels of tolerance and different views for what is and is not appropriate. After one of my American guy friends completed an intense conversation about clothing with his taxi driver, he told me that reactions such as “Where are the uncovered girls’ parents?” still exist. However, I have found the more youth from around the world put themselves in other people’s shoes, the more they try to accept each other and understand the differences.