Is there such a thing as a global beauty? When I was living in Casablanca in the early 1990s I asked myself this question, as I noticed how a city off the map of international fashion was nonetheless attentive to international fashion trends.
Girls in my class at a local business school told me where to go to buy stocks of designer handbags originally intended for export. Well-to-do ladies recounted their regular Paris shopping sprees, while university colleagues exchanged addresses for discount clothing shops in places our conference schedules took us - Paris, New York or Aix-en-Provence.
Parisian chic
I observed the plethora of images of Egyptian actresses, female French newscasters, or Lebanese singers that filled magazines like Nous Deux or Sayedati and papered the walls of grocery stores. And I decided to explore how people get entangled in making such pictures into themselves by going to the places where pictures are produced - first, in the media centres of Paris and Cairo, then by looking at the places we make up our fashionable selves: in beauty salons.
Many studies of fashion focus on how models and modes dictate how we ought to look. Often, the idea that Barbie dolls or American actresses figures serve as guidelines is generalised to suggest that they influence women everywhere, banishing or re-interpreting the looks of local beauties.
But in Casablanca, people only know a few of the famous Hollywood stars. Haute couture, cosmetic products, films and TV shows from Paris are seen as most fashionable, and beauty is often associated most readily with Egyptian singers or actresses. Trying to understand contemporary ideas of beauty in the triangle of Casablanca to Paris and Cairo, one gets to rethink both how we might conceive of the interplay of local cultures and global fashions, and how we think about the boundaries of Europe and the Arab World and the influence of modernity.
Hollywood glamour
Following media and people as they migrated amidst these three cities, I discovered that since the early 20th century, a common contrast of urban to rural bodies formed the background for the emergence of the modern urban lady. This lady slimmed down, took off her headscarf and started wearing shorter skirts, setting her moving image against the background of the unmoving, salt-of-the-earth background of the rural women. City girls projected their own race with fashion against the screen of country tradition, charting her progress against her country cousin, who clung to culture. At least, this is how urban elegantes, feminists and anthropologists have told the story.
Although the countryside in France, Egypt or Cairo was a repository of culture, hence the local body, over time many country girls moved to the city and became sophisticated ladies. The spread of literacy and mass media assisted them in their transformation. But I found that this process led to new kinds of competition - new ways not just of adopting a certain style, but knowing how to wear it appropriately. New strategies for social distinction even claims to cultural authenticity - followed on the heels of urbanisation and modernisation, and played a role in establishing ever-new ways of being distinctive and distinguished.
Of course, certain differences in tastes or body practices can be described in how styles are worn and bodies treated in Morocco, France or Egypt. Most Cairenes are not shy about wearing bright colours and big hair, while Parisians are more likely to wear short hair. In Casablanca, techniques for cutting and styling hair were similar to those in Paris, whereas in Egypt, hot irons are still used to straighten and style most womens hair. There, most women remove more of their body hair than in either of the other cities, although waxing or halawa (sugar wax) or the removal of facial hair with string are now available through the triangle traced by the three cities. One might conclude that there is a homogenisation of beauty in this area, at least.
However, this is not precisely the case: against the backdrop of the heavy body of the country cousin, a host of social conflicts and distinctions are set in motion by women who go to different kinds of salons.
In Casablanca, Fatima lives in a world where beauty claims to be everywhere, and anyone can choose which beauty to become. But how she is judged for adopting a particular style is another question. Identical models are interpreted differently Chez Alexandre, at Fast Cut type salons, or in neighbourhood parlors. Alexandre makes you up like a haute couture dress. He is an artist who promises to reveal the real you. This is a profoundly different experience to selecting a cut from a menu at Fast Cut or Promod, or having a whole group of women comment on whether you really ought to get such a sophisticated cut in the neighbourhood beauty parlor.
In Casablanca, Paris and Cairo, these three types of salons exist - in varied proportions. If we glance in the mirror of each salon we see a different kind of relationship to the coiffeur, to media images and to other clients taking form. These different social worlds are directed at spaces that can be described as a neighbourhood where everyone knows each other, or spaces that are anywhere and nowhere - directed toward realising universal norms that rely on objectified counting. Or they can be mapped in terms of photo-opportunities with the rich and famous, whether these take place in international capitals, or close to home.
Due to limits on our pocket books, our time, desires or imagination, we might not be able to enter every kind of salon or the kinds of other spaces to which it is attached. And although fashions promises include the idea that we can decide how we look, everyone knows that no one really lives in a world of such absolute possibility. It is in the eyes of other people we know that we see our reflections and judge ourselves.
As I followed magazines and recipes for beauty from Casablanca toward Paris and Cairo, what struck me most was how fashion fits into the various spaces of our life - whether were being gazed at through paparrazzi cameras, the eyes of our neighbours, or through our own scrutiny of ourselves as compared to Jacques Dessanges menu of faces.
In my exploration of this trio of cities, I discovered that the global is shaped not only by particular styles, cultures or ready-made models produced elsewhere, but also by the currents of meaning, exchange and language that shape those places that we actually inhabit: the salons and parlours of the world.
