The Arab World
Nada El-Yassir comments that "in certain areas in the Arab world; the lighter you are, the more beautiful you are considered." She also says that it is common that women in the upper classes dye their hair blond, and may use skin-lightening products, like in some tropical countries. In some countries the implications of this hierarchy go so far as to affect one's social class and job opportunities.
Iman Al-Jazairi says "Looking at Arabic poetry and novels, it is interesting to see that pre-Islamic poetry up until western colonization at the eighteenth century, women were always described as having long, wavy, black hair, brown skin, black eyes with the white of the eyes very white. The body proportions were also bigger. During the later part of the nineteenth century and until very recently, light skinned, blond women have usurped the beauty standard in modern Arabic literature.
Read more about this topic: Colonial Mentality
Famous quotes containing the words arab and/or world:
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)