Bellydancing!

This afternoon I walked straight past my usual treadmill at the women's only gym and instead followed the blaring Arab music, leading me to the jam packed room that was shaking from the speakers. I slid in the back of the exercise class and glanced around.

I was under-dressed. At the gym.

Every girl was wearing a short skirt with jingling bells, tight shirts that stopped above their mid-drift, knee high workout boots, wild hair, and TONS of make-up. (I was wearing baggy sweats, t-shirt, and running shoes. My hair was slicked back in a pony-tail.)

Drums began. My hips did not. (Maybe I just needed a cool skirt?) For the next hour I was caught in the middle of a mass group of Arab women belly dancing. I LOVED IT. Women of all different ages and shapes and sizes seemed to suddenly transform into a newfound confidence once their hips started wiggling. They were all GOOD! I was the tallest and least-curvey woman in the class and felt pretty awkward at first. Until I realized that all the stress of the week (particularly being shamed and yelled at by two policemen in Arabic yesterday) was all forgotten once the music began.

One hour later, exhausted, I went to the locker room to change back into my street clothes with the women in my class. They replaced their jangling skirts and hoop earrings and tight tops with head-scarves and long skirts and wiped off their make-up. Once again they had become modest, respectable, passive, and temperate mothers and sisters and daughters.

On the way home, I passed several covered women walking quietly to the fruit market and wondered... how many of them are secretly belly dancers underneath their conservative hijabs?