The Invisible Counterpoint

Randa Jarrar said this: I’ve written about  the Boston bomber ; about the U.S. government’s  attempts to deport my brother , which kept him in jail for weeks; and about Israel detaining me – a U.S. citizen –  and denying me entry in March 2012 , but the essay of mine that has sparked the most impassioned responses is one about … Belly dancing . [ … ] There were amazing, supportive, beautiful emails from Arab-American sister writers. There were also violently angry emails and tweets that, in a typically sexist and fatphobic way, criticized my appearance and my size. I have been called a fat camel and a hairy ape and a dirty terrorist ever since I moved to the U.S. at the age of 13, so – I’m used to it. But call some people out for wearing genie pants and makeup, which are supposed to make them look Arab, and they go nuts. In my essay, I historicized the appropriation of belly dancing, but I naively thought people knew about the British empire, about U.S. imp...

Patrick McEvoy-Halston Arab women are not vessels for white women to pour themselves and lose themselves in; we are not bangles or eyeliner or tiny bells on hips. We are human beings. (Randa Jarrar, "Why I can't stand white belly dancers, Salon.com) I've heard at least one person describe her interest in belly dancing as having to do with good exercise, mostly, and a chance to spend some time with the girls -- a tea party, I guess, but one that shapes you up; numerous others have said they do it out of respect for the art form, wanting to participate in it, its traditions, its beauty. I haven't heard anyone admit that they do what this author argues most white people belly dance for --  to enter into  the brown body Postcolonialists will point out that Europeans ascribed the East as home to dangerous luxury: it had deadly powers of allurement. Pictured as one scene, it would be the brothel, the orgy -- or a market place that would undue you with fabrics,...