One after another, in their lemming-like attire of a style fad born and buried 2 years ago in nyc, these women paraded around the streets of downtown Beirut with tights tucked into either flat or high-heeled long boots and covered on top by a wool dress that ended just slightly below where a butt, if it existed and didn’t blend in with their hamstrings, would be while talking on their cellphones. This was made more apparent to me when I noticed all the attention afforded to me and my half-Tunisian cousin. Why? Because our “exotic” bodies were far deviations from the norm. She also informed me that Lebanese women are exceptionally sensitive about this fact, and delusionally of the belief that they do have ass. 

Moving on from body/aesthetic analysis to that of intellectual capacity/academic performance…

I was fortunate enough to attend two of my cousin’s university classes. And I noticed a class dynamic so different. In these female-dominant courses, in which LV bags lined floors and hung on seat backs, interrupting the professor in middle of his/her lecture, his/her response to their questions, and becoming exceptionally defensive when receiving even the slightest criticism or challenge, was the norm. 

Also, there was an off-putting reverence for the West. In the middle of class, when I joined the discussion with my own perspective a heated debate, ears perked and the standard clamor subsided when I marginally mentioned my undergrad alma mater. As further testament of this claim, Lebanese people seem to favor Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts coffee to their indigenous qahweh selections-and even their customary preference for their colonizer’s cultural commodities is sidelined when an American option presents itself. 

However, these vacant (not just mentally, they have this peculiar glazed over eyes thing going on ALL THE TIME) , interruptive, defensive, conspicuous consumptive label whores do have something going for them though, they have a lot of attractive Lebanese men to choose from. This is the only and first country I have visited in which the men are asymmetrically disproportionately more attractive than the women. ‘Eed Down!

Given these noteworthy deviations, maybe Lebanese Americans are right in their obdurate insistence that they aren’t really Arab. Now I won’t be mad at your efforts at disassociation/distancing yourselves from the Arab-American population.