At least 8% of female students are sexually harrassed on campus.
-American University in Cairo student newspaper, December 9, 2012
Two months ago on the first day she wore the niqab, Heba El-Shabrawi entered the gates of American University in Cairo and attempted to pass through security. The guards refused to let her on campus…Last week the AUC administration informed El-Shabrawi of their final decision, either she takes off the niqab or she feels free to attend another university.
-Al-Ahram Weekly, December 7, 2000
I would not believe how most young women dress today in Cairo at AUC and on the downtown streets. Forty years ago when I was a student, schoolmates on campus wore tight jeans, fitted t-shirts, and high heel sandals. Bouffant hair and lots of make up. Most were dropped off by their drivers at the campus gate so they did not have to walk the streets, but many did.
Heading up Tala’at Harb toward Groppi’s and Cafe Riche, you had to dodge throngs of women standing excitedly outside the shoe (sing. gizma, pl. gizam- you can see the sexual pun coming) store window displays. Gizma Gazing, as we gave new lyrics to the tune of Kung Fu Fighting, a song still popular at the time.
Then the new veiling started. A complicated concept of resistance to the male gaze, an armor-clad workplace uniform- the equivalent of a jacket’s absurdly big shoulder pads worn by New York female bankers (as in the movie Working Girl), the exact opposite message- an emphatic FY- sent to men by a woman who once might have worn those FMPs sold on Tala’at Harb Street.
The new veiling coincided with the economic necessity of women having to work outside the home and to go every day into the uncivilized side of Cairo. A leading indicator of the coming of the burka you could say, when Afghan widows, so many of them made so by the war, in order to feed the family had to work in public- still essentially a war zone, and wearing a burka was like having your own driver drop you off.
But even in Cairo, burka is not bullet proof. No one will forget the video of the girl in the blue bra having her hijab ripped off and beaten while protesting in the streets. My cousin when studying in Cairo the year of Mubarak’s downfall volunteered to ferry women, returning home tired from their office jobs, from one side of Midan Tahrir to the other when the square was full, to protect them from male jeers and hand grabs.
The old AUC campus was right there, but the dress code had changed long ago. A full niqab at the student center. Those AUC girls back in 1979 sure could have saved a lot on lipstick, if not mascara.