Women rock the casbah

"We take the tattoos, the long hair [from America], that's it," says Said. Indeed, for the University of Damascus student, sitting on a campus bench in an ankle-length trenchcoat and white headscarf, attempting to establish a link between clothing and freedom is a superficial endeavor.

What's missing, some say, is a really genuine Arab voice, such as lyrics that explore taboo topics and more storytelling, in place of haphazard shots of exposed arms and legs. But other critics say the videos have definitely affected public thinking. After all, they're everywhere, from Damascus cafes and restaurants to hotel lounges. The cumulative effect, they charge, is that women have been turned into commodities. It's a sentiment some religious leaders agree with.

Seated around a lunch table at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus, Maya Yousef and twins Nadia and Hala Muhamna - members of an all-girl's classical music ensemble - offer vociferous protest. "[These music videos are] not about being openminded," says Nadia, whose trendy skirt and top would easily blend in on any American campus. "It's only about the body, about appearance.... [These videos] really affect the way men think about women. [They] focus men's attention on the body."

Al Amin Merhe takes a more sinister view. "It's a marriage between technology and tradition," she says in a phone interview from Beirut, Lebanon. Arab tradition, according to Dr. Merhe, already pressures a woman to play the seductress for her husband at home. Music videos only intensify that, offering plastic-surgery enhanced women as role models.

But perhaps the lack of readily available provocative images in the Middle East is partly responsible for such a marriage. One Lebanese music-video director (who didn't want to be named) says the new videos represent "male fantasies," and their popularity is the direct result of what he calls a repressed society.

TV writer Haddad and others hope that, at the very least, exposure to suggestive videos might curb male ogling on the street. As it is now, she says she keeps her outfits understated during the day, but adds, "If I had a car, maybe I'd change my style."

Public reactions, from both men and women, are the major reason why a group of male high schoolers hanging out in Damascus's hip Shaalan district say they would never want their sisters seen looking like Elissa. They all admit readily to watching her videos, though some say they wait for their parents to leave or they go to a friend's house. Not that there is anything wrong with her choice of garments, explains Najd Sheikh, who sports a small earring, "but you need the people in the street to understand that."

Yet another interpretation of the music videos says that they offer images of strong and independent Arab women willing to make unabashed declarations of desire.

"These stars are very emboldened by their position ... they are really powerful women. They dictate contract terms, they have a lot of say in programming, they are seen as unattainable women, beyond reach," says Ramez Maluf, director of the Beirut Institute for Media.

Nadine Labaki, who has directed Nancy Ajram's videos, including one release set in a 1940s all-male cafe, sees herself as trying to depict women who defy the stereotype of the docile and modest wife or girlfriend. Much has been made about a scene in the video in which Nancy dances up to two men in the middle of an arm-wrestling contest, instigates a brawl, then saunters away. Viewers were shocked more by her bold and courageous acts than by anything she was wearing, says Ms. Labaki. "Women here are not very free with their body, they're very self-conscious. I'm trying to change our point of view ... to show women with character."

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