Tag Archives: beauty

Turkish women and their hair: A visit to the guzelik salonu

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This is me no more - I am going back to silver, much to the chagrin of Safiye Rakkas, the vainglorious dancing girl and Kenne, the Queen of Manners and Maintenance of Ladylike Behavior. The little chorus of dancing girls are in Switzerland and Karagöz is dancing a jig at my (for Turkey) oppositional move.

This is me no more – I am going back to silver, much to the chagrin of Safiye Rakkas, the vainglorious dancing girl and Kenne, the Queen of Manners and Maintenance of Ladylike Behavior. The little chorus of dancing girls are in Switzerland and Karagöz is dancing a jig at my (for Turkey) oppositional move.

We Karagöz puppets take over while m’lady rest. She a right mess! Don’t tell her we say. We sneak jumpy jumpy iPhone toy, find her drafts from summer. She too perfectionist. We hit “publish” while she sleep, We blame Karagöz trickster – it work every time!

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Today, our beloved dog went for a visit to the canine guzelik salonu for a nail trim – he won’t let us get anywhere near them.

And it made me think – it’s been a while since I have made my own visit to a human guzelik salonu, a.k.a. beauty salon.

That’s because I am growing out my silver hair, as the most empowered women I know refer to it. No more hair dye. Just me as is.

Safiye Rakkase, the vainglorious dancing girl puppet sniffs and turns her head in an exaggerated angle as she haughtily exits the house. Kenne, much to her horror, stands, straightens her crisp, linen apron, and follows her out the door.

As the Queen of Manners and Maintenance of Ladylike Behavior, Kenne is somewhat mortified to actually *agree* with a dancing girl, of all things, but “principles,” she pronounces with perfect diction and a balanced dictionary on her head, “are principles.”

It wasn’t always this way, you know, the dying of my locks. Aside from a teenaged dalliance with the infamous manic panic dyes in all shades of the rainbow, it has been me and my early silver strands.

And then I went to Istanbul with M.

And his family was horrified.

Just.

Horrified.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that they turned their heads back and forth, up and down, much like my dog trying to sniff a mouse out of a hole, wondering what on earth that grey hair was doing on my head.

“In Turkey, Liz,” they would say in succinct and serious sentences, “we dye our hair.”

I heard this refrain over, and over again each day. I even heard it from M.’s elderly aunt, who herself is silver-headed. Go figure. Sometimes there was a variation along the lines of “you are too young to let your hair go.” No stranger to bucking tradition when it came to my hair, I paid it no heed during that first year’s visit, nor the second, but the third, that’s when I broke down. Not that I broke down on the idea of moving away from my silver gilding, if you will, but rather I got so sick of the familial protest that I let them have their way with my hair.

$300 later, I walked out of the snooty salon with my sister-in-law, raven haired once more. Five years on, I have done endless battle with the hairdressers in the States – begging to grow out my silver – and each time being convinced that a non-permanent dye would “blend it in.” Although there are plenty of silver-haired foxettes out there, it seems the hairdressers just can’t get the idea that we WANT our silver.

Thankfully, Billie Jean, my hair savior right here in Provincetown, “got” me right away, and I am back on the path to grey – with all of those layers of dyed locks shorn in favor of what one friend called “middle-aged short.” We’ll see how this goes down in Turkey, but for now, Karagöz is dancing his oppositional dance, and Hacivad Bey is smiling too.

Men and Pedicures: Macho duck – or “metro-sexual” from a Muslim land?

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man getting a paraffin pedicure

Macho duck or metro sexual from a Muslim nation? Looks like M. is somewhere in between!!!

When I last left you, I was sharing my story of exposure to the Arabian Nights thanks to my mother, who championed imagination and a broad world view uber alles when it came to raising her girls.  She did not, however, do much, as I recall, to counter any kind of gender stereotypes – or gender realities that might have been implanted in our young minds when it comes to gender relations.

These days, however, her daughter thinks A LOT about gender stereotyping, gender relations – and the exponential complexity of all of this when one is married to someone from a country that most people think is in the Middle East.  Of course, most Turks I know don’t think of Turkey as being in the Middle East – they think they are in Europe – and not just the folks on the European side of Istanbul, mind you.  I will, however, leave that topic alone, and get back to the item of the day, gender stereotypes.

These days, gender bending and discussions of the deconstruction of gender are a dime a dozen.  And perhaps this is why, a few years ago, a new term came into the vernacular – “metro-sexual.”  Wikipedia describes this as “a neologism derived from metropolitan and heterosexual coined in 1994 describing a man (especially one living in an urban, post-industrial, capitalist culture) who spends a time and money on shopping for his appearance.” And this, the term “metro-sexual” is what leads me to today’s commentary.  Let me start at the beginning.

Yesterday, when we awoke, M. was getting ready to walk our dog, which he does every morning on the early side, and complained that his feet were really hurting.  His heels were cracked and dry despite his best efforts to take care of them, and he was in pain. “I know what you need,” I said without thinking much, “you need a paraffin wax pedicure, that will help a lot!”  I sort of heard the shock and awe of my statement make its impact like a tsunami on the little chorus of dancing lady puppets, but before I could even think about that, M. responded without much thought at all by saying, “sure, good idea, let’s go today, we can do it together.”

At this statement, Karagöz began to holler and pound his chest like never before – and in fact – all of the male Karagöz puppets began to shake and shiver in shock.  Now of course, M. can’t see these puppets, so he had no idea what was behind the look of complexity on my face – instead he just focused on leaning in to kiss me goodbye before his walk with our canine companion – and in the process, knocked Karagöz dead off of his perch on my shoulder.

Crying out in rage and anger at this slight, Karagöz proclaimed “what kind of Muslim macho are you married to? None at all, I say! He must keep up with the manly culture! How can he do that when he is in a lady salon?  Horrors!  What kind of ‘metro-sexual’ nincompoop would allow himself to enter into the Wicked World of Women called The Salon? This is NOT acceptable!”  Not in the mood for engaging in cross-cultural dialogue with my puppets, I just turned to them, and said “welcome to 2012, puppets, no biggie, his feet hurt, he needs a paraffin wax.  Get over it.”  Not my best moment, but we all have our days.  The puppets decided to hop on my shoulders and just watch what happened, and that was the last I heard from them all day – I think they were really just ensconced in culture shock.

Male pedicure parrafin

...and here is my macho duck (not!) having his purple paraffin wax pedicure at the ladies salon!

Later that day, as we walk ed into the salon together, we joked about how M.’s posh brother (otherwise known as Mr. X.) often gets his feet “done” by a pedicurist.  I laughed to myself about trying to explain that to a recalcitrant stereotype-buying American when talking about men from Muslim-majority countries such as Turkey.  I also wondered about the roots of self-care in the hamam – or Turkish baths - which men certainly did, and do frequent in some families (although not in M.’s, they are too Euro-focused if you ask me and worry about all of those germs).

I felt really happy and free to have a male partner in life who was not at all uptight about the idea of going into a salon for a pedicure.  When I first met him, I noted that he loved buying lavender-scented hand cream for himself – and laughed off my friends’ comments that he might not be straight after all.  In this way, M. couldn’t be farther from the stereotypical macho male from a Muslim land.  While he may have a few macho moments – like the time he irked my stepsister for being to loud and competitive in a word puzzle game – there isn’t much of that to deal with that I can recall.

We had a great time relaxing our aching feet in the hot water, getting hot stone massages on our legs and dipping our feet into scented paraffin wax.  M. made merry with all of the people around us, it was a wonderful afternoon and our feet still feel super.

As I watched M. have his feet scrubbed and encased in hot purple paraffin, the song “macho macho duck” came into my head.  For those of you not in the know, Disney put out a disco record in 1979, and I used to know every word of it.  Donald Duck was featured as a “macho man” in duck form.  As I secretly whistled the tune in my head, I thought, M. sitting here, encased in hot wax, well, this makes my job of explaining that he ISN’T a macho, macho duck (to quote the old song), so much easier. M. is just who he is – and no worries about more or less – and indeed, shouldn’t we all have that luxury?

 

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From the Aegean to the Mediterranean and over to Italia: Check out Mozzarella Mamma

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Hand-coddled mozzarella by Fiore di Nonno

…and now for something completely different, a shout-out to my step-sister Trisha Thomas, and her hysterically on-point writing about navigating cross-cultural family life.  While slowly-by-slowly primarily focuses on the joys and challenges of learning to be culturally responsive in one cross-cultural marriage (and one band of zany Karagöz puppets), the focus is on Turkish and American interaction.

So today, I want to take a step away from the Aegean and hop back on the continent for just a moment – back to Europe.  So, set your compass on a course for Roma, Italia, for just a moment.

Trisha, a journalist with Associated Press Television News, has lived in Roma for 16+ years now – and is working on publishing her book about her life there…her book, Mozzarella Mamma: Deadlines, Diapers and la Dolce Vita documents her life as a working journalist (specializing in coverage of the Vatican) and mamma to three wonderful but very busy children.  Trisha has always had a wicked wit and writes with both alacrity and a poignant edge.  Suffice it to say she cracks me up on a daily basis.

Trisha covering a story on Filipino rebels on Negros circa 1987

So, what does mozzarella have to do with mammas?  Read all about it here where Trisha describes the coddling of young children by their Italian mammas being akin to the making of that Italian delicacy, buffala mozzarella.  Or check out my neighbor Lourdes’ company, Fiore di Nonno for a description of handmade mozzarella-making.

But no matter what you do, please take a moment to check out Trisha’s blog, Mozzarella Mamma, where she tells the story of “linguini and luscious legs” (and believe you me – linguini is NOT what you think it is), the horrors of pasta alla Amatriciana in the blender and cappucino after lunch or the sin that is breaking the spaghetti before cooking it so it fits in the pot a bit better.  Her humor will surely brighten your day.  Check it out, consider joining her mailing list, and have a good laugh – the recipes are great, too!

Here is Trisha’s description of what she is up to with this blog:

“How does a young American woman brought up on field hockey, frozen vegetables, washing machines, takeout Chinese food and backpacking become transformed into a functioning Italian mamma with perfect pasta and luscious legs? Impossible.

How does any woman manage the obligations and responsibilities of wife, mother, job, and household management? In my case, this included the requirements of three children, TV journalism, and Italian societal demands with the heavy influence of the Catholic Church and, in the past 15 years, the political era of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, where women as sex objects have become the norm.

How does a woman adapt and change to meet the demands of one society while trying to maintain her core beliefs, values and cultural traditions? My own answer to this question has always been, ‘with good friends, humility and a sense of humor’.

When my children were young, I spent hours sitting on park benches while my kids were playing, joking and laughing about difficulties with other mammas. My park bench mamma friends are still around, and still supportive, although we spend more time these days seated in cars driving our kids around. Over the years, my mamma buddies have provided the understanding and wisdom to get me through. One mamma friend summed up beautifully my concerns about being an Italian-style mamma. She said, “We try to teach them good values, we try to teach them to work hard and do their best, but somehow I think we are turning our children into mozzarellas.”

Over the past 16 years, as I have been raising my children, I have jotted down my humorous experiences as I have endeavored to become a good Italian mamma without losing my American-ness. These notes were made on pages pulled out of my reporters’ notebooks. I wrote down my thoughts at the side of the swimming pool sweating it out while my children were in swim class, on the side of the soccer field, on the bus to and from work, and in the orthodontist’s waiting room. Each little note was torn out of the notebook, folded up quickly and shoved into my wallet. Gradually I would take the notes from my wallet and type them up. Then I divided the anecdotes into different categories—food tales, health stories, clothing issues. My notes were a way for me to let off steam when I was frustrated, and to laugh at my own foibles.

Now I have put those notes together in a manuscript that I hope to publish as a book. It is called: “Mozzarella Mamma: Deadlines, Diapers and the Dolce Vita”. But instead of continuing with my habit of note-taking my younger friends and colleagues told me that the future of Mozzarella Mamma needs to be in a blog. So here it is.”

Brava, Trisha!