Comments on KABOBfest: Arabic-philia in the Celebrity Tattoo World

You guys at Kabobfest are awesome!I was researchin...

2008-04-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

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!

Our favorite 5 diamond prostitute in NY has an ara...

2008-03-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

Our favorite 5 diamond prostitute in NY has an arabic tattoo on her right forearm. The only clear picture is in the NY Post

Maytha, it's not really the whole gay community, i...

2008-03-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

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.

dear programmer craig, I'm glad we can now add "ho...

2008-03-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

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?

but, does she study the positioning and placement ...

2008-03-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

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 "ho...

2008-03-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

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.

ct, thanks for the info. I'll assume you were seri...

2008-03-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

ct, thanks for the info. I'll assume you were serious since it didn't sound like a joke :)

Abou Mickety-Mack,wow-this is so interesting. It d...

2008-03-09T12:57:00.001-07:00

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.

Got some real porn aficionados here, eh?But people...

2008-03-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

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 :(

I think the "Arab/Middle-Eastern" type is one of t...

2008-03-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

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.

So Abou Mack-why do you think it has been such a p...

2008-03-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

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?

"So, I have to ask you, what exactly does the Arab...

2008-03-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

"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"

I maybe can provide a partial answer to the quest...

2008-03-09T08:48:00.000-07:00

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.

my tunisian friend showed me a picture on his phon...

2008-03-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

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.

There was an article I read about Arabic tattoos i...

2008-03-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Interesting site, Edmund.The description of this g...

2008-03-08T01:56:00.000-08:00

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

Edmund,Here are some tattoos that i found:http://w...

2008-03-08T01:29:00.000-08:00

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!

dopesexyfuck-what do they have tattooed? And why d...

2008-03-07T19:59:00.000-08:00

dopesexyfuck-

what do they have tattooed? And why do you think it is so prevalent in that circle?

Peace

bint al 3grab-was your grandmother bedouin? I reme...

2008-03-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

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!

This is a bit off topic, but no one ever talks abo...

2008-03-07T18:21:00.000-08:00

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.

From the top of my head.. Ricky Martina has an Ara...

2008-03-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

From the top of my head.. Ricky Martina has an Arabic tattoo, and a couple of gay porn stars also have some too.

im all for cultural 'harmony' but i'm quite sick o...

2008-03-07T15:28:00.000-08:00

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?

True, I can see that point. THat's actually what d...

2008-03-07T13:09:00.000-08:00

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.

Mohammad,Excellent point. It is as if the letters ...

2008-03-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

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

Wow. I love the ignorance of the Perez readers' co...

2008-03-07T11:52:00.000-08:00

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.