Showing ankles

Every woman who has spent an extended amount of time in the UAE and ventured out on the street by herself (God forbid) at times has at some point had encounters with a certain type of men. They are often wearing traditional Arab dress, and if driving a car it most likely is a white SUV with tinted windows. More often than not, they are old enough to be your dad.

I am a pretty decent looking example of the female gender, if I do say so myself, and I receive my fair share of male attention. Not that most men who make it their business to leer at women actually require said woman to be hot, or anything, as long as it’s got boobs of some kind it’s worth leering at. All sorts of interesting growls, howls, whistles and “hm-HMMMs” are produced when confronted with an acceptable sample of woman, and it all honestly does not bother me very much.

These men, however, don’t do any of that. They are much worse. They make me feel uncomfortable. They are POLITE. They will start with a big smile, and then they usually ask where the lady is from? They will inquire after your opinion of the UAE, your career and how your day has been so far. It is EXCRUCIATING. Not because I am a social retard, but because they really don’t actually want to know about my career. When I get leered or whistled at, or get a “you so beautiful” randomly flung my way, I can simply ignore it entirely and be on my merry way. But I can’t just ignore someone who is being POLITE, can I? I haven’t been brought up that way! When someone walks over and says hello, you can’t just keep walking. Even if you know exactly what it is they want, even if they are technically not being polite as they would never act the same way towards a woman wearing abaya for example, I would still feel like a bad person if I’d pretend there was no one there.

What I do in stead, generally, is wave the wedding ring in their face after the initial “hello”. It’s big and sparkly, probably just for this reason, and should get the message across. “THIS SPOT IS OCCUPIED.” More often than not, though, it doesn’t seem to have much effect. “Oh a husband, how nice, now can I have your business card?” I suspect the reason behind that is that, in their eyes, my husband can’t possibly be a very good one if he lets me walk the streets by myself wearing something that just MIGHT reveal my ankles, so clearly I am in dire need of a man who would never let me suffer such an indignity. Unfortunately for them, I don’t have a business card.