Myth of the Egyptian girly man

An unexpected side effect of the British occupation of Egypt might have led to its undoing. In Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Duke University Press), Wilson Chacko Jacob reveals how Britain presented Egyptian men as weak, subservient and emasculated.

“The British seemed to fix the entire non- European world in a past beyond which the inhabitants showed no desire or will to advance,” writes Jacob, who is graduate program director of Concordia University’s Department of History. “This depiction of Egypt underwrote and facilitated paternalistic colonial politics.” Ultimately a backlash, Jacob writes, led to “a political movement that overcame British domination and liberated Egypt.”

A skewed view
During British colonial rule, from 1882 to 1936, Egyptians were inundated by caricatures of themselves with Britain as “active and virile” and Egypt as “degenerate and feminine.” This view saw Egyptians as “content in their backwardness, as if the East were famous only for belly dancing,” writes Jacob.

The British extolled themselves as manly, globetrotting superiors. Although these depictions were created largely to help the colonizers feel better about themselves, they had the unexpected effect of forcing Egyptians to reconsider what it meant to be a man.

Egypt looks inward
In reaction to the British strongman image, many Egyptians had a renewed interest in physical health. “The care of self would be integral to the process of forming a new national subject,” says Jacob, “but in turn it would also constitute new, universal knowledge about the body, gender and sex.”

Suddenly Egyptians were obsessed with manly games like wrestling and bodybuilding. Pictures of muscular, semi-naked hulks filled magazines, and – with the rise of feminism – so did images of women dominating men, accompanied by frank discussions about intercourse.

While this constituted a seismic shift in Egyptian relations, it also had a powerful twist: It gave birth to the formation of an “anti-colonial nationalism that was simultaneously a political, ethical and aesthetic movement,” writes Jacob.

Egypt effectively reversed the British caricatured view of themselves as girly men. By creating and worshipping their own strongmen, Egyptians retired the tough-as-nails globe-trotting British soldier image from their collective psyche, kicking him out with a big cartoon boot.

For a perspective on how these cultural elements impact on current events in Egypt, read NOW this Wednesday, March 9.

Related links:
•    Wilson Chacko Jacob
•    Concordia Department of History
•    Working Out Egypt