Thread: Spinoff: Beautiful Middle Eastern Women of All Colors

Remember the beautiful Dalida?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if2ywlFWeGI&feature=fvw]YouTube - HAIFA WEHBE BEFORE PLASTIC SURGERY . هي�اء وهبي قبل و بعد التجميل[/ame]

The Haifa pic I was thinking of (pretty dark-skinned, dark eyes) is at 1.46!

i know of them some middle eastern dancers that use lighter make up on their skin as well as some do not go in the sun to stay lighter. Also some have natural light hair eyes and skin. Some also get surgerys to get more western features. we always want to be something we are not right? Alot of people like my freakles and i don't so much i try and get ride of them and they say how cute they are. i love my mother inlaws curley hair she like my strait hair.

My dad just got a spot removed this week the dr .said it is cancer so he has to get a peice of skin the size of a half dollar taken off his arm next week. I used to be a life guard so i think i have got my share of the sun. if i want to get really tan i use the mystic or the wipes just to add alittle bronze. I hope all goes well with you.
For everyone make sure you get checked once a year for strange spots . great post!

Originally Posted by ANA_bellydancer

Remember the beautiful Dalida?

I just adore Dalida. She was born in Egypt but her parents are Italian and than she moved and spent the majority of her adult life France. In my opinion she WAS one of the most beautiful women on this planet and her voice was ever better.

Originally Posted by princessisabella

Haifa Wahbe: YouTube - haifa wehbe- before and now

You be the judge

YouTube - HAIFA WEHBE BEFORE PLASTIC SURGERY . هي�اء وهبي قبل و بعد التجميل

I see a nose job, contacts, and she lightened her hair (and possibly stays out of the sun). The biggest difference I see is that she dropped the ghetto-fabulous lipstick and started wearing nude lips, which to me makes her look a lot different, AND they seem to be fond of washing her out in photos, so she looks even lighter. She looks pretty either way, but there seems to be a big trend for ME songstresses (and now belly dancers, too) to want to look as artificial as possible. They've succumbed to the Hollywood ideal of "perfection", only repackaged for the Middle East.

Oh yeah - the artificial look is OVERDONE especially in Lebanon. Every celebrity looks FAKE FAKE FAKE, and people keep saying they look better (whcih I will NEVER understand, coz I think their faces look butchered). I actually find it more extreme in lebanon than in Hollywood. Almost every female celeb in Lebanon looks like Western B-celebrities in those reality shows, with lots of surgery done to make them it-girls, and make up for lack of talent.. and not like Arab A-celebs should look like :)

As for Haifa - there is so much Haifa bashing going on, I find her beautiful and interesting.
The old photographs look so amateurish, and yes somewhat ghetto-ish, plus they look like early 90s material, with some 80s reminiscence.. so they're hard to compare to her look from around 2000 to now, anyway.
I like her smokey eye and nude lip look A LOT. It looks great on her.
Yes, she is definitely "retouched" on the pics. I think the photoshoppers think this looks glamorous (Hollywood as the role model I guess).

oh haifa is so totally over plasticised, it ain't even funny. she was gorgeous before too tho
i wonder if ME men in the entertainment industry feel the same pressure to look lighter..

and yes, please let's just be happy with what we've got?

and speaking of Dalida, here's the gorgeous Chantal Chamandy who's all sorts of mixed. born in alexandria to greek and lebanese canadian parents and now lives in canada (is that correct?). she did a wonderful job IMO singing to the all famous song, 'helwa ya baladi'.

Originally Posted by zfejzic

oh haifa is so totally over plasticised, it ain't even funny. she was gorgeous before too tho
i wonder if ME men in the entertainment industry feel the same pressure to look lighter..

and yes, please let's just be happy with what we've got?

and speaking of Dalida, here's the gorgeous chantal chamandy who's all sorts of mixed. born in alexandria to greek and lebanese canadian parents and now lives in canada (is that correct?). she did a wonderful job IMO singing to the all famous song, 'helwa ya baladi'.

I think this is a different Dalida. The Dalida of Helway Ya Baladi was born and raised in Egypt but her parents were Italian. She lived most of her adult life in France where she was well known. But has been dead, by her own hand, for many years.

Souzan

Originally Posted by Souzan

I think this is a different Dalida. The Dalida of Helway Ya Baladi was born and raised in Egypt but her parents were Italian. She lived most of her adult life in France where she was well known. But has been dead, by her own hand, for many years.

Souzan

i didn't say that was dalida. re-read what i wrote :)
i said speaking of dalida, this reminded me of chantal b/c she sung her famous song.

Oops, sorry.

omg Satin, I hope your checkup goes okay. I stay out of the sun now, but I've gone to tanning salons before as well. They weren't working for me so I stopped going. Plus I always felt out of place at tan salons.

My skin issues go way back even before I became a bellydancer. I was never able to live up to the tanned ideal of our society, it took me a while to get comfortable in my own skin and accept that I'll never look like everybody else. I still hate wearing swimsuits and going to the beach/pool, I feel too exposed. And I have to hide under nasty greasy sunblock any time I'm in the sun for more than 15 minutes or else I burn, then peel. My husband, who is Filipino (by blood only) gets soooo dark, I envy him just because he doesn't have to hide from the sun like I do, and of course he couldn't care less what color his skin is. But his brother on the otherhand, wears layers and layers of clothing to mow the lawn so he doesn't get darker and have to face ridicule from his other Asian friends.

But indeed I believe the skin/hair color discriminations do exist out there for the GP for bellydancers. I talked to the owner of the studio I teach at, he was the one that got me that last connection. Everything turned out okay, but at first she was questioning him about my look too. He had to vouch for my dance skills because my look threw her off. Again, not something I expect to happen with every gig, but I do know now that it does.

And I don't know if this has anything to do with my hair/skin, or maybe it's the way I dress or carry myself, but I do get a lot of "just by looking at you, you don't look like you'd be a bellydancer", and I've even got that one from Middle Eastern people before. I guess I'm a speak softly and walk with a big stick / shimmy kind of girl.

Originally Posted by Michelle75

I just adore Dalida. She was born in Egypt but her parents are Italian and than she moved and spent the majority of her adult life France. In my opinion she WAS one of the most beautiful women on this planet and her voice was ever better.

Yes, and she won Miss Egypt beauty contest (I don't remember the year).

KDizzle, with your touchable curls,
I used to work at a portrait studio in Texas (for about four years.) Every once in a while, a toddler with gorgeous curly hair would come in, and invariably, a gentleman or lady would ask the mother if they might touch it. They didn't want to give the baby "ojo" with their envy, because it was beautiful.
I wouldn't swear that's why weirdos want to touch your hair (or anyone's pregnant belly, for the love of Zeus) but at least you won't attract the Evil Eye;)

My niece has gorgeous deep brown wavy hair, really thick and admired by all her friends, and she straightens it half the time. Curiously, she actually looks older with it natural, so the straightening is probably just as well because she's only *just* 16 as it is, but I think it's so much lovelier when allowed to wave and display all its natural fullness.

Heh. Ask me about the grillions of times folks have touched my hair. I have perfected the stink eye - it will freeze them in their tracks before they even manage to touch it now. But, inevitably, at least once a day, a person's hand will start drifting toward my hair, seemingly of its own volition.

I have big hair, wild hair, a head full of Sisterlocks (which many people have never seen before), but I just don't get the idea that folks really think it's perfectly okay to touch any part of a person's body without being invited. And yes, when I was pregnant ... folks touched my belly. i finally grabbed some woman's hand in a death grip and snarled, "Do NOT touch me!" I did it at work in the hallway - never happened again - not at work, at least.

Originally Posted by MakedaMaysa

Heh. Ask me about the grillions of times folks have touched my hair. I have perfected the stink eye - it will freeze them in their tracks before they even manage to touch it now. But, inevitably, at least once a day, a person's hand will start drifting toward my hair, seemingly of its own volition.

I just don't understand why so many people think it's okay to touch a black woman's hair? One of my best friends has wonderful unprocessed curls and people touch her head in the most random places (hello starbucks!!) On a side note during my last trip to Japan with a co-work who has naturally blond hair, she suffered the same exact issue.

Originally Posted by _Tanya_

I just don't understand why so many people think it's okay to touch a black woman's hair? One of my best friends has wonderful unprocessed curls and people touch her head in the most random places (hello starbucks!!) On a side note during my last trip to Japan with a co-work who has naturally blond hair, she suffered the same exact issue.

I really think it's because we're "other". We're "exotic" and not what they're used to. I don't mean that to say that they've never seen Black people before, but if you have no sort of close or intimate relationship with a Black person, I think it's largely a matter of unrelenting curiosity. At least some people have the courtesy to ask first ... though I usually still say "no."..l;,

The only time I've been pretty okay with it was when I was in high school and we had several Russian exchange students. They asked, through their translator, if they could come closer and see my hair. I said "yes". Then they asked if they could touch it. I said "yes." I don't know if it was because I was younger and that was one of the first times it'd happened to me. Now, as an adult, I have much less tolerance for that sort of thing. I hate feeling like I'm some sort of science experiment or zoo animal.

Originally Posted by phillyraqs

Let's figure out a way to dye our skin blue, start the trend, and then all make millions from the product.

Belly-smurfs? *g*

Well, I doubt this guy made any significant money out of it: Meet a real-life ‘Blue Man’ - TODAY People

The thing that stuck out for me was how vehemently some people ( either users or manufacturers of colloidal silver) protested the cause for this poor guy's argyria, going as far as to point out that even water can be deadly because, you know, you can *drown* in it... ,r:;

Re skin color: I have a ME friend who uses the lightest color of foundation and powder she can find and often comments on my skin (which I refer to as fishbelly white). At the end of the day, it about being happy with what you have.

Hope you'll be ok, Satin. I'll keep ny fingers crossed for you.

My dad is from Albania,my mom is from Sweden.
At all times when I grew up my fathers family,relatives and friends told me to NOT SIT IN THE SUN.
There were not only hats,parasols and sunsceen slatherings;
I´m talking about sun phobia!:/

I was told that being darker meant that you were not ever going to get married,and "thank god you have a light skinned mom otherwise you have your fathers color".
Daddy has olive skin,brown eyes and black curly hair.

"Good hair" was straight,"bad hair" was curly according to my grandma.

It was totally OK for my brother to get a tan.
I looked around me among albanians in diaspora and asked:
"Why do I see so few couples where the woman has the darker color?"


In my teens I became the "nerdy girl":)

Nerds doesn´t have the standard beauty ideal;
it was tewtally cool that I was pale,wore glasses,played RPG:s,loved sci-fi,was (and is)into SCA stuff,was (is still)in a Tolkien club,love horror and fantasy movies and so on yada yada...

As a bellydancer I still get gigs although I´m overweight,
but clients often comment that I should "get a tan".


I went to the tanning salon about 3 times a week when I was younger,
but after my 30-s I decided to give up tanning beds because of melasma and spots developing.

Sometimes I slather on tan in a can before gigs.

Originally Posted by emma-bessa

My dad is from Albania,my mom is from Sweden.
At all times when I grew up my fathers family,relatives and friends told me to NOT SIT IN THE SUN.
There were not only hats,parasols and sunsceen slatherings;
I´m talking about sun phobia!:/

I was told that being darker meant that you were not ever going to get married,and "thank god you have a light skinned mom otherwise you have your fathers color".
Daddy has olive skin,brown eyes and black curly hair.

"Good hair" was straight,"bad hair" was curly according to my grandma.

Heh. Your family sounds a lot like mine.

Originally Posted by _Tanya_

I just don't understand why so many people think it's okay to touch a black woman's hair?

Originally Posted by MakedaMaysa

I really think it's because we're "other". We're "exotic" and not what they're used to. I don't mean that to say that they've never seen Black people before, but if you have no sort of close or intimate relationship with a Black person, I think it's largely a matter of unrelenting curiosity. ...

My husband (blond hair blue eyes) experienced this all the time when he was young and living in the Philippines. They would pet his hair. When I was young (strawberry blond anti-gravitational curls and freckles) and visiting Japan I experienced the same thing, especially in the places where they had never seen a non-Asian before. I agree Makeda Maysa- in my experience anyway- it's because we're "other".
I have to say- I think it's better to be "curious" about other than afraid or distrustful of "other". But I still don't like being touched by strangers.

Keeping my fingers x-ed for you, Satin.
I had malignant melanoma on my upper left arm, which I had removed. I now have a big ugly scar, but it`s better than the alternative. Keep us posted.

I have an afro most of the time. People sometimes ask me to touch it but usually they know me. Very seldom does anyone actually walk up and touch me unexpectedly. A girl at work was pregnant and I touched her stomach everytime I saw her practically. I just felt drawn to. So I changed my hair and she walked up and touched it. I told her she was exempt from my don't touch me rule since I touch her everyday.