Wet Headed Stranger

I'm going to borrow a story from my most excellent friend Trish, who is enjoying her Fulbright year at the University of Jordan. We swap emails daily on the trials and tribulations of the ex-pat existence, and, unlike mine, hers are always funny and insightful. She joined a local gym and goes to work out every morning, partially because she is a physical fitness fiend and also for the hot showers (sort of the same experience I had in India). Anyway, she would always leave the gym and walk home without drying her hair. Now, we're in the Middle East, so getting your hair to dry outside is not a problem. Trish never dried her hair because she is very dedicated to environmental issues and realized early on that hair dryers are really bad for the environment - one of those luxuries that we really should avoid. However, she noticed that people stared at her, many frankly unpleasantly, all the way home. She told the story to a couple of her fellow Fulbrighters with more experience in the area and they were amused/horrified. Apparently in Jordan if a woman is walking around outside with wet hair everyone assumes it is because she has just finished shagging some man; so, wet hair equals questionable virtue (which certainly does not apply to Trish). This left Trish with a real quandry, but in the end she decided to start using the hair dryer at the gym to avoid an uproar in the neighborhood. I told her that this should serve as a case study in ethics or international relations classes. Later I was telling the story to my friends here, and half-way through they started giving me these very knowing smiles. So, I asked, does this mean that there is the same societal view here in the Emirates? My friend Liane laughed and said, "oh yeah, total whore." It's funny the odd little societal rules that you pick up, some of which are pretty obvious and others of which are more complex and mysterious and often unfathomable.