Gyrating hips, cleavage, bondage.Arab music video?
Yes. Prepare to revise your expectations.
In Egypt, where sexual mores are increasingly conservative, where in some neighborhoods an exposed shoulder can draw gaping stares from both men and women, music television is increasingly sexually suggestive.
The region's nearly 40 satellite music television channels-many of them Egyptian-broadcast all over the Middle East directly into the homes of the region's young people. And, as is often the case in this region, what is permitted inside the home and what is condoned outside of it are vastly different.
Pop stars like Haifa Wehbe, Nicole Saba and Sofia Marikh are pushing the envelope of social acceptability, showing some skin and challenging gender roles by portraying women exerting control over men and taking what they want from them.
To be clear, we're not talking about Snoop Dogg levels of lewdness. There are no bikini-clad back-up dancers making eyes at the camera. If these videos were shown on MTV, most would seem relatively tame.
Many of the music videos-or video clips as they're called in the Middle East-rely on the power of suggestion for their shock value. With titles to her songs that translate to "I Can't Wait" and "Kiss the Boo Boo," Haifa Wehbe has made a career out of leaving the finishing work up to the viewer's imagination.
It's not just the music either. Much of the advertising on the stations takes a similarly racy track. Melody Tunes, and its sister stations Melody Hits and Melody Arabia, feature commercials where Melody Tunes Man-an portly Egyptian wearing safety goggles and a skin tight superhero suit complete with a cape and the station's emblem on the front-fights injustice in mildly ironic ways, while his sidekick-a busty brunette wearing a skin tight, low-cut leotard-assists him. If the sexual imagery and frequent shots of her chest weren't enough, her name in the commercials is Booby. I'm not kidding you. Booby.
In more conservative countries like Saudi Arabia-where young men and women have no direct contact with one another-music television stations like Egypt's Melody Tunes are downright scandalous. So much so that music video producer Lena Lahham-in an interview with the BBC -called them a form of "mild porn" for people in the region's more traditional nations.
It's no surprise. Imagine living a country where you rarely interact with women at all, and if you do they're veiled, and then being able to go home and turn on your TV to see a slender Haifa Wehbe pop out of a pool in a skin tight bathing suit or Booby running in slow motion down a deserted Cairo street.
And because all the channels are satellite based there is no way for governments, as much as they may like to, to regulate the channels. So, in addition to giving the region uncensored news, satellite TV has given the Arab World uncensored access to an unending stream of prefab pop music, and unlimited access to otherwise prohibited visual content.
This is just a remarkable reflection of the many, sometimes contradictory, directions that the Middle East seems to be heading--becoming more conservative in some ways and more liberal in others at the same time.
Seeing such contradictions is at the heart of realizing that Egypt, like the United States, is much more complex than the world community gives it credit for.
Egypt is many things, but not usually what I expect.
Yousef Abugharbieh is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.