As noted in an earlier post about the actress's work with Iraqi refugees, Arabina Jolie, with a prominently displayed "3zeema"("strength" or "will") on her arm, appeared to be one of the few and possibly only celebrity with an Arabic tattoo on her body. Surprisingly, as recent internet pics have proven, this is not the case. A rumor spreading on the internet and blogsphere like fire is that of Brad Pitt inking up his lower back out of inspiration from Jolie with an Arabic tattoo. However, the only pic on the net that points to that discovery is too small to discern what is written and even to make out the alphabet in use! If anyone sees a more reliable pic, please send it K-fest's way.
RHIANA:
Giving my father more reason to enigmatically celebrate this talentless, shamelessly pop princes , Rhianna went ahead and got "hurriyah," freedom in Arabic, tattooed to the leftside of her back. Thank you celebrity-obsessed, online paparazzi Perez Hilton for posting the pics and his ignorance along with it. Only after 283 comments in response to the post was he made aware of the goldmine he found. As an update on the post, he noted that: "A lot of readers are commenting that the tat is "Freedom" in Arabic." 
CORRIE KYM RYDER
The award-winning British soap opera star Corrie Kym Ryder (Doesn't it look like a porn star name? That's what my out-of-touch with pop culture self thought before I googled her. I mean, doesn't every overly-make-up-ed twenty-something Brit woman look like either a drag queen or a porn star?) tatted her left arm is an Arabic transliteration of "David" and below that,"Emily."
HOT SYRIAN GUY IN LA
And the last notable mention, a celebrity in my own heart, because like a devoted teenie bopper, I would definitely have this man's pic up on my wall: an uber-sizzling half-Syrian bartender at a bar in Santa Monica on Wilshire and 11th tatted his bicep with two important words to him in Arabic to acknowledge his Arab heritage. I wish I could remember those words, but I was too busy oogling his remarkably chiseled features. Anyways....
Considering the unprecedented popularity of kuffiyahs in America (quite literally in NYC, as the expression goes: it's a wrap!), shishas on the hip-est big-city teenager's lips, and now Arabic tattoos, is there an indication that protracted contact with the Arab world and concern for the "Arab Street" (albeit for all the wrong war-mongering reasons) has translated in Americans embracing the new Arab cool? What do you think? Seen any Arabophilic trends in your hometown to speak off?
Friday, March 07, 2008
Arabic-philia in the Celebrity Tattoo World
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33 comments:
What an interesting post Maytha... though I wish it did not come the same day I criticized the media's obsession with celebrities.
This post is more about the use and abuse of Arabic I think.
BTW, we should all get KABOBfest tattoos at the next retreat.
like i said Will, I am sooooo out of touch with that world, the only reason I know about the popular use of Arabic tattoos is because people have forwarded said pics to me. You know the only one I took strong note of was my hot syrian bartender.
And why abuse? Who are we to assume a person's intentions or the underlying motivations behind getting an Arabic tattoo? What is the character of their bodily expressions? Are we really in a position to assess a person's relationship with the Arabic word or Arab culture?
And you know the first ranter to scream "cultural co-op" in the K-fest house! Invoking the spirit of Spivak (albeit a bastardized reading of Spivak), "Can the celebrity speak?"
What irks me about these Arabic tattoos is the sheer crapness of the design...Arabic calligraphy can be amazing, but most of these tattoos are written in crappy 'print' Arabic thats worse than my handwriting.
PS May, 3zeema means 'strength' or 'Will'.
omg! i remember a sad/funny story about an arabic tattoo. one of my friends, a caribbean dude, was enamored of arabic letters and wanted an arabic tattoo of his own. i asked him to consult with me beforehand, to avert the tattoo artist mispelling the word, and to give him advice on what words to pick. So I was nervous when he went and got the tattoo on his own. He told me he had placed it on his foot. He said he had just picked out the word from a magazine and said he liked that word the most out of all the ones he saw. He showed me his foot and the word he had chosen was "Allah"!
Sacrilege and brimstone and hellfire!
MAY CAN'T READ ARABIC. MORE EVIDENCE THAT KABOBfest IS A FRAUD! SEE KABOBfestWATCH FOR MORE DETAILS!
there were a bunch of sites dedicated to people that got shit like stupid bitch tattooed on them in chinese because they didn't bother to check the meaning of the characters before they got them done. i think it's only a matter of time before the arabic equivalent comes out. permanent body mods in language you don't understand-not the best idea!
ٍِAllow me to ask, what does this mean? Does it mean that Arabic is famous in USA, Arabic culture is the new wave??
What exactly?
Wow. I love the ignorance of the Perez readers' comments.
"it looks israli or something. a girl I know has a tattoo with the same kinda lettering… it looks cool though!"
"If I am not mistaken, those are ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyph"
"How do you say, "Oppressive, mysogynist, hateful, backwards, violent, smallminded, homophobic, art and book burning, other religion persecuting, medieval religion that uses terrorism and fear to get what it wants" in Arabic?"
"freedom in Aragic? I don't think so since the word does not exist in their barking and grunting "language". More like submission and conquest. RiRi should start trying out burkas because that's what's she will have to wear — well that is if the horde let the dhimmi live and don't saw her head off. "
"Too bad there's no such thing for women in any middle eastern country except israel "
"Fucking hezbollah has invaded perez? Oh great, it's going to be a jew hunt in this place "
"Syrian? My god I'm so sorry, you even lower on the food chain than a hezzie or pals. "
Ok I have to stop. Disbelief is beginning to border on disgust.
Mohammad,
Excellent point. It is as if the letters themselves are so exotic to them they do not even bother to learn about the beauty of Arabic calligraphy.
and May, that is what I mean by abuse. if you are going to get an Arabic tattoo, why have it be elementary text? It's like getting an English tat in Times New Roman.
Will
True, I can see that point. THat's actually what disturbs me about this new trend, that the beauty of the art of arabic calligraphy is lost in the sometimes uncritical, probably unresearched rushed decision to get a tattoo written in Arabic.
However, I have compassion, because what this ultimately all boils down to a limited knowledge of the Arab world, which again can be attributed to limited contact with the Arab world.
im all for cultural 'harmony' but i'm quite sick of this shisa-tattoo-kuffiyah-exotic thing. (all that's missing from that list, is kabobs ;) )though i have friends who would disagree and tell me that this all part of the plan for arab world domination, lol. i wonder though- why now?
From the top of my head.. Ricky Martina has an Arabic tattoo, and a couple of gay porn stars also have some too.
This is a bit off topic, but no one ever talks about the old arab women with tatoos. My grandmother(Allah yarhamha) and all her sisters had tattoos on their chins and hands/feet. In the 90s when the tattoo grunge swept through the US, i used to feel a bit superior about it(i still do). i.e. you think you're so subversive because you have a tiger on your arm. My grandma has a tattoo on her face, how punk rock is that!! The way I see it is that every generation thinks itself the original when we are all just derivatives.
bint al 3grab-
was your grandmother bedouin? I remember reading about tattooing practices of older bedouin women-and yes, that sentence could only come from the mouth of someone (unfortunately) educated in the socio-cultural anthropological tradition!
dopesexyfuck-
what do they have tattooed? And why do you think it is so prevalent in that circle?
Peace
Edmund,
Here are some tattoos that i found:
http://www.grunt.com/images-bs/tattoos/maddox.jpg
That first one is a Marine Corps infantryman's tattoo (if the "grunt" part of the URL is to be believed, that indicates an infantry MOS). That Eagle, Globe and Anchor is the emblem of the United States Marine Corps. The OIF at the top stands for "Operation Iraqi Freedom". So, I have to ask you, what exactly does the Arabic say? Probably not something flattering to Arabs, I'm guessing. Though, I could be wrong!
Interesting site, Edmund.
The description of this girls tattoo:
http://www.grunt.com/images-bs/tattoos/carnevale.jpg
Hello my name is Lisa from Michigan; i got my tattoo after I met this wonderful Marine this past June at Tarheel Opry we had a great time I kicked his butt in pool, his name is eric he is out of camp lejeune and now deployed. He has the same tattoo across his chest only not with the design and heart. This keeps me close to him and reminds me of the strong connection we had, hopefully i can talk to him soon.
The "I heart USMC grunt" tattoo on her ass reminds her of the "connection" she had with a Marine she met at a pool hall. Isn't that some shit? :D
There was an article I read about Arabic tattoos in the hip hop world.
The article was printed about 5 years ago. Some of them were pretty out there, like the one of the young black girl with "Sharmoota" (Whore) tattooed on her arm.
The article indeed translated the tattoo and mentioned that these sort of nasty Arabic tattoos were a rage in the hop hop/rap scene.
my tunisian friend showed me a picture on his phone he took of a an american girl who had mabsut tatooed on her back but the tatoo artist misspelled it with a long a, alif, as the second letter.
and yes, it's a shame to not see any attention paid to al-khatt - and with such an importance in Arab culture historically and still in the arts and print media, etc. today.
I maybe can provide a partial answer to the question dopesexy's post triggered...
the half-Turkish half-French porn star Francois Sagat is one of many sex actors with Arabic tattoos. He has a huge crescent on his back (not exactly Arabic but still). On his myspace, in the photos section, he is posing with his brother and they're both sporting Turkish-themed tattoos.
www.myspace.com/fsagat
As you can see from the eclectic nature of his page, he might be the only gay porn star with half a brain. A lot of the middle-eastern people in that industry drum up their ancestry as much as they can, in the most visual way possible (which usually means tattoos). Some of the middle-eastern themed porn titles are really cheesy and exotifying. Often they henna tattoo their entire bodies with random arabic letters. The genres range from the "Arabesque" orientalist harem fantasy, to Urban maghrebian delinquents raping french policemen. I really should write a paper on it. It's where all the deepes social fantasies are carried out.
"So, I have to ask you, what exactly does the Arabic say? Probably not something flattering to Arabs, I'm guessing. Though, I could be wrong!"
programmer craig it says "stop or ill shoot"
So Abou Mack-why do you think it has been such a phenomenon in the industry? Does the use of these tattoos stem from a desire to fetishize Arab culture or Arab cultural symbols in hopes of adding a veneer of exoticism to the sexual fantasy? Or am I pontificating like a good academic-one only equipped with words and not thoughts in her verbal arsenal?
I think the "Arab/Middle-Eastern" type is one of the most sought after in the western gay imaginary, not to gloat or anything. But people talk about bedding an Arab dude like it's the holy grail. There needs to be an expression like "once you go Arab... you never eat scarabs?" I don't know...
Yeah, there's a lot of exotification, but it's not unique to Arabs. There is porn out there for the most heterogenous of tastes. In that way it's kind of refreshing, even if politically incorrect. There are even sites and video studios fetishizing whites. For instance the "black thugs/white trash" category which for some reason is very popular.
Got some real porn aficionados here, eh?
But people talk about bedding an Arab dude like it's the holy grail.
That's fucking nasty, man. Maybe it's because Arab men are infamously gay? Or is that only Turkish men? Used to be Greek men, right? But that was before anyone knew how much more gay Arabs were I guess. No wonder there are so many spinsters in the Arab world :(
Abou Mickety-Mack,
wow-this is so interesting. It definitely does deserve a paper. If I have anything to show for my two-year stint in grad level academia, it is that I can recognize what a conference/journal worthy abstract submission looks and sounds. And you sir, I would venture to say pretty much have one right there. Just throw in a few questions that relate to the "ontological" and "epistemic" origin of said phenomenon and you would be golden.
ct, thanks for the info. I'll assume you were serious since it didn't sound like a joke :)
dear programmer craig, I'm glad we can now add "homophobic" to your long list of superlative qualities.
May, there is actually a famous professor at Berkeley who studies sociology through porn, she's in the Rhetoric department I believe, but I forgot her name.
but, does she study the positioning and placement of the "Arab stallion" in gay porn?
dear programmer craig, I'm glad we can now add "homophobic" to your long list of superlative qualities.
Oh, just because the idea of two Arab guys buggering each-other makes my skin crawl, I'm homophobic, eh? OK, guilty as charged then!
So, how much gay porn do you watch, anyway?
Maytha, it's not really the whole gay community, i've seen like less than a handful of gay porn stars don an arabic tattoo. Yes Francois Sagat is obsessed with Arabs but he doesn't have an Arabic tattoo.
Maybe people are getting sick of Chinese tattoos. I know I am.
Our favorite 5 diamond prostitute in NY has an arabic tattoo on her right forearm. The only clear picture is in the NY Post
You guys at Kabobfest are awesome!
I was researching the origin of the word "hazard" (from Arabic الزهر ) and I came across
this, possibly the worst tattoo ever.
Peace!
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