Humans Of Coffee World

Hidden Ugliness

'Humans are all ugly'
My psych teacher used to say.
We spend our whole lives hiding our ugliness, our inherent selfishness, and our fundamentally animalistic natures.

He used to create scenarios in the class.

"If there were to be an earthquake just now. And you got a chance to save yourself, as compared to a slim chance of saving your friends....what do you think you'll do? Will you return from safety to help save your friends?"

Then he'd joke around, picking on random students.

"X, guy will run for the hills leaving his girlfriend behind. And Y girl, will return to dig up her iPhone...maybe she'll see her classmates groaning for help, trapped under rubble...so she'll take a selfie with them, before running away."

A lot of people candidly agreed.
Yep. That's totally what we would do. Save our own skins first, before Maybe returning to help others.

No idea why this was rattling around in my brain. It doesn't really have much to do with what I wanted to talk about today.

I want to talk about Pakistani Men. (I will probably keep coming back to this topic, so if you're offended by this article in anyway...tough luck. Ha!)

I was YouTubing one of my favorite old TV shows this week; "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie"
It's a classic Pak-army drama, aired during the 90's. (Highly recommended if you can understand Urdu, or can tolerate dubbed versions)

One scene really irked me. Well, not really the scene, but the implications of it.

So the scene was of a UN funded voluntary army camp for Pakistani soldiers in Bosnia (during the seize fire around '95-ish I guess)

Pakistani Men were eating lunch in the mess caféteria, which was being run by local Bosnian women. Seeing blonde European women for the first time was being comically exaggerated, and the soldiers were shown literally gaping at the young beauties.

"Are they fairies?" One gaper gasped. (Maybe it was meant as comic relief, but I found it cloying on the poor girls' behalf)

One of the girls remarked laughingly that it feels like they don't have Women in Pakistan...The way they're ogling.

I wish I could go back in time, and tell the lady; "They stare at us like that too. Like we're exotic fairies descended from enchanted forests. Like we're aliens, freshly on the run from Area 51. Like we're a glass of water, and they've been thirsty for years."

It honestly doesn't matter what we look like. Ugly. Pretty. Hot. Average. Some men can stare, and stare, and stare forever.

It's funny. But I was raised to believe that if I cover myself I'll get a protection of sorts. An invisibility cloak of protection from The Stares. Or the harassment that follows it.

Allow me to dispel that myth.

I've witnessed fully covered (Abaya+Niqab/face veiled) women being stared at, and harassed in public places.

If I cover myself when I go out alone, I do it out of a deeply rooted belief that it will protect me somehow. It's like a security blanket. (Admittedly, It's in my head)...when I'm out with my family, I don't feel the need to do it. I feel safe with my Dad and brother around. They become my cloak of sorts.

As women, we have a heightened sense of Stares (amirite?) And I can feel the difference, when I'm out alone/with my friends versus when I'm with my family.

Thankfully, In the educated class of men, staring is rude (Praise be to Allah!). They don't stare for days like the uneducated majority out in the streets. That's not to say that they don't check women out (Because they totally do). But they do it in a subtle, non threatening way.

Not a day goes by, when I don't hear a harassment story from someone.

Just today, my friends (traveling in a Rickshaw) were followed for a good hour, by a car full of these useless looking men. Even though none of these three girls was wearing anything remotely provocative.

One of the girls later remarked that perhaps those asshats could sense the panic and nervous helplessness these girls were emitting. It excited them.

It makes me sick.

It's like a disease.

The endless Stares.

These men in the streets have wives or girlfriends, or whores at home. But it's not enough. Nothing is enough, I've realized.

I think it has a lot to do with our pretension of modesty as a society.

We pretend to be all moral, and Islamic. We don't date (not openly anyways), we don't have premarital sex (not commonly anyways), we don't touch, or kiss, or dress inappropriately in public (Not everywhere anyways).

These things are for behind closed doors. Behind cellphone screens. Only to be enjoyed in movies. Or as porn maybe....definitely not in person.

That pent-up sex drive has to go somewhere, right?

An easy solution is to get married.

But is it easy?

I could go on for days, detailing how difficult marriages are around here. (And I'm talking about pre-marriage rituals and requirements, not even the aftermath)

My logic may be flawed, but it seems that modesty is making one gender Not-quite-so-modest.

It's easy to hide our interest as a woman. If we like someone, we won't gape at them, and hope they'd receive our telepathic proposal to procreate. (Or I dunno. I won't judge you if you do this. I think I'd do it if I ever meet Ryan Gosling irl.)

Maybe it's difficult to hide that ugliness as a man? And they become selfish animals. Treating the women as they would treat a movie character, or a zoo animal. An object of Stares. Someone you cannot touch. Only look at.

Sorry for depressing you. Harassment is something that literally worries me everyday. I feel disadvantaged as a girl, and it drives me nuts. The fact that I have to alter my lifestyle because the men of the world aren't human enough yet.

Rant out.

(Unrelated photograph that I took at campus yesterday. Just wanted to add something beautiful to something very ugly. ^__^)