Devon Liddell
MES Student Paper Prize Award Winner, 2006

Historical developments of the 20th century such as universal education, economic liberalization, global media and legal reforms have dramatically altered the fabric of Egyptian life, particularly in the capital city, Cairo.   I argue that these transformations have produced a new category of young women who are of age but whose sexuality has not yet been channeled through marriage.  Global discourses intersect with family pressures and economic realities in a cultural debate that is played out symbolically on women’s bodies, with the veil, body shape, clothing, and other bodily representations signifying a woman’s choices relative to the processes of change she is navigating in contemporary Cairo.  This semiotic aspect of femininity is due in part to the legacy of colonialist discourses that posited women as symbols of either backwardness or cultural authenticity, but also because of the inherently visible nature of young women’s clothing and behavioral choices as they negotiate new patterns of female lifestyles.  Furthermore, I argue that the apparently trivial nature of these young women’s efforts at beautification obscures their broad implications.  Intentionally or otherwise, the aggregate decisions of these women about self-presentation have the potential to rework the rules of the cultural system in which they are embedded.

In 2006, Devon earned her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Northwestern University.   She developed this MES paper from her honor’s thesis, “Celebrity Body, Qur’anic Propriety: Beauty and Respectability in a Changing Cairo.”  Her current research interests revolve around issues of transnationalism, social networks and language use in North African labor migration.  With the support of a grant from the Fulbright IIE she is researching the social integration of Moroccan agricultural laborers in a small town in southern Spain.  She then intends to enroll in an Anthropology PhD program starting in the fall of 2008.  The author would like to thank the professors of the Northwestern Anthropology Department for their support and guidance, particularly her advisor Katherine Hoffman.  Thanks also to the late Cynthia Nelson of AUC, as well as the Cairene students who were both friends and informants.