It’s finally a weekend in Sahel and I was excited to hit the beach after a week packed with deadlines and events. There I came wearing my black shades, which I had bought after a 70% sale from H&M trying to keep discreet about the price, not in front of the girls, but in front of my male friends who happen to break the news each time we meet about their latest limited editions of Ray Ban colored aviators and up to the minute Blackberry covers. I was expecting to unwind with my iStation and my black swimsuit from last season, when I couldn’t help but use my Memopad to document the disastrous beach scene I was overlooking.
Hair bands, Pink vs. Purple sun wear, short swimming suits (seriously short), piercings, tattoos and of course cold bottles of Watermelon I.D. I’m not against fashion at all, and I won’t blab with the cliché of other Arab men who die each day for their countries, but the way Egyptian guys today express their sense of fashion is an issue that may raise a lot of angry eyebrows. The way guys compete about the brand of their shades and flip-flops is anything but fashionable and fabulous. And what’s with the ‘Branded Guy’ who wears designer beachwear from head to toe and does the catwalk in front of us 5 times in half an hour as if he’s a familiar face of People’s Magazine? I guess the answer is ignorance of ‘self-esteem 101’ and the overdosed wear of designer beachwear is really nothing but a transparent showoff.
I needed to change the scene and decided to jump into the water with a bunch of my friends, and there, I couldn’t control my rage, I bumped into an old friend of mine who has just got back from Lebanon. He was wearing the old school black shorts and aviators. I thanked God that he hasn’t changed a bit, although Lebanese guys are known to be at the height of fashion, but again our Egyptian fashion scene isn’t talking about fashion at all. We had a few laughs about his experience in Lebanon and I was really having a good time, when we were disturbed by one of those Pink Panthers. “Hey! Bassel come over Shady has just arrived with a bunch of I.Ds” the Pink Panther said in a thrill. I couldn’t believe myself that he was grabbing my friend from his arm at the same time we were having a conversation! Where is chivalry? Obviously gone astray and erased by the sassy pink dudes. When my friend ignored him so as not to leave me by myself in the middle of the water wondering what an I.D tastes like, he continued our conversation. “You won’t really get any, everyone is grabbing a couple of bottles”, the Pink Panther kept on grabbing my friend’s arm and this time looking me in the eye as if he wanted to tell me what’s so important I’m saying that couldn’t wait. So I told my friend that it’s okay to go with Mr. Pink Panther.
To be fair, not everyone in my group wore the pinkish threads and some of the guys were stuck to their manly norms which ban any pink, purple or even highlights of yellow and green. And the guys who didn’t wear any shades made fun of those who wore pink and purple and a lot of girls also weren’t glad by the guys’ style of ‘Formet El Sahel’.
The Pink Panthers really ruined my weekend and hope for finding a confident partner. I told myself that long gone are the fantasies of the Baywatch hunk who would save me from ‘accidently’ sinking on the shore. And I remembered when I was calling the pharmacy the other day for ordering razors (after all I’m a working girl who has no time for sticky wax) and the pharmacist asked me if I needed the pink Gillette Venus edition or the ordinary blue one, and without thinking I said no, the blue one, naively guessing that the blue will provide me with a sharper shave, but after the past weekend, the ‘thumbs print’ logo of I.D drinks was ironic enough to make me learn that the difference between pink and blue is just a state of mind.
