Touching the core... of cultural differencies! :)

I have another story to tell, and it might please those of you who are passionate about cultural differencies, and understanding their nature. I will just briefly describe the situation, pictures I will publish as soon as the camera's battery gets charged may be helpful too.

While shopping with my Mexican friend Pepe in Medina, I found a beautiful skirt, in a style that was always my dreamed one, fully matching my personality. Somehow the colors, the texture and all the applications it has are so exotic and look soooooo cool in my opinion. I loved it from the first moment, and one of my friends who were with us got it for me after a successful bargaining (big mwaaaah for Ahmed ^_^) I tried it today and what I saw in the mirror was even better than what I expected. The look that it gave me pleased me a lot, and made me even happier.

I wanted to share it with my friend, but when he saw me, he just laughed and said "you look like an Egyptian prostitute". It made me think and ask him some more questions about it, because although it was said in a friendly way, he really thought so, and it was his true association with my outlook. I know, that if I go in Warsaw to my friend's party dressed this way, their reaction would be "cool", and although I will certainly grab some attention, the association with my dress would be rather positive, original, outstanding, maybe a bit crazy and artistic, definitely different, then for people here. He told me that if I go on the street dressed this way, most probably I will be taken as a prostitute. Because it attracts too much attention, the colors are too strong and bright, the texture of a lace is too transparent and reveals too much of what is underneath.

It all clicked in my head, and made me more aware of different associations to the same things between cultures. I've never seen an Egyptian prostitute, so I have absolutely no negative association with this kind of dress. For me it can be a traditional oriental dress, a costume of a belly dancer, a cool and outstanding skirt bought in an "oriental shop" in Poland, or anything else. But for people here connections are pretty straight, because of their previous experiences, and what they've seen, and also how they were brought up, with what concept of "sexy" or "cool". It can be so radically different and strong, that we will never understand its nature, because we will not pay attention to the source of our feelings.

I started thinking about a kind of association I would have if I see my Moroccan friends in Poland, dressed in the way they do here. And I'm not even talking about people who dress in a little bit more traditional way, like girls wearning veils for example. It doesn't bother me at all, maybe because I had no association with it before, I've never had any deeper contact with anyone like this previously. Here I meet some really cool, kind and friendly girls wearing scarfs for example, I make friends with them like with anyone else, and it makes no difference for my perception. In general, this is how I'm trying to behave, having no expectations just after seeing someone, not judging the outside of a person. But sometimes it's difficult, and actually for me it's hard especially when I'm thinking about someone in Poland, dressed in a way that is very familiar to me. I'm putting stress on "in Poland", because somehow going to live abroad I tried to "switch off" the judgement that is present in each one of us, and have as little as possible preassumptions about how the things should be, or should look like. So coming back to the topic of associations with how some of my friends dress here, when I'm trying to generate it, and erase in my head all the good things I already know about them, the thoughts that are coming are definitely not aligned with how they are. For example: "teenagers", "simple minded", "brainwashed with mass culture", "not concerned with world issues", and rather far from my lifestyle and values.

I hope that all the people reading it are open minded and that no one will get offended :) I definitely don't think these kind of things, I met enough people in my life not to judge the book by the cover. And in the end, I wouldn't hang out with all people here, if I didn't think that they are nice and interesting, and if we didn't have a great time toghether :) I took this situation as an examples of how a cultural difference can look like, and how sometimes people vary in their judgement of a situation, of others, of what they see or hear. And how much the context determines this judgement. I think the conclusion is to be even more open minded and unattached to preassumptions. And definitely living abroad helps a lot :)

By the way, a cool article about ancient egyptian sexuality here.