Vlogger uses her tongue-in-cheek song to call out the shame women are made to feel
▶ Haifa Beseisso tells Saeed Saeed why she turns to humour and creativity to make herself heard
In the Arab world, where cultures and traditions intertwine, the concept of shame is as central as it is strong. Generations are raised to avoid the scourge of “aib”, an increasingly nebulous term defining forms of behaviour deemed to bring shame to yourself, your family and your associates.
Arab women acutely feel the weight of aib. Their actions are constantly scrutinised, from the way they speak to the colours of their clothes. Palestinian vlogger Haifa Beseisso expresses those anxieties in her recently released The 3aib Song, with an accompanying music video shot in the desert location of Al Maliha in Sharjah.
Over a funky production of throbbing bassline and horns, Beseisso raps a list of social minefields that Arab women navigate, while a chorus of male voices strike down the suggested behaviour with the words: “Shame on you”.
The list of no-nos include being ungrateful, unthoughtful and not having hot meals ready when the husband returns from work. Replying to the last part, Beseisso dryly states she’d better fix “the king” some “soup and panini”.
And that’s only at home. Beseisso starkly illustrates how aib also pervades the workplace: “If he works overtime, he is hard worker,” she raps. “If she works overtime? She is selfish.”
Speaking to The National, Beseisso concedes that if it weren’t for the humour coursing through the track, the whole affair would have sounded depressing. “It was very hard to actually talk about it at first, but I realised I had to be honest with myself about it before going out and being vocal in public,” she says.
“The reality is that it is more difficult being an Arab woman than, for example, a western woman. I know this because I have travelled and seen it first-hand.
“They don’t have the background voice of the family, the uncles, the neighbours and social media, who make many of us think: ‘What are people going to think or say about me?’ It is crippling.”
As well as agitating for a wider discussion among families and the greater Arab society, Beseisso describes The 3aib Song as a form of collective therapy. The fact the lyrics are conversational, she says, is no accident.
“It began with discussions I had online with friends about the pressures we women go through in terms of looks, from your cheeks, lips, nose,” Beseisso says.
“And then we realised that it went beyond that and how we felt that pressure at home, including marriage. The more we looked at it, we realised it all came down to this fear of aib, and how that culture has restricted women no matter what we did.”
That anguish is real. Beseisso saw the pernicious effects of what she describes as “aib culture”, when recently uploading fresh content without her hijab. She recalls how the decision not to wear the hijab, which she details in an Instagram video from last August, resulted in backlash and personal abuse.
“For the longest time I was loved a lot because people looked at me as this bubbly woman travelling the world with the hijab and how I am representing this part of the world. My confidence was celebrated because I had a scarf on,” she says.
“Once I decided to take it off earlier this year, I was attacked and I was accused of using the scarf for money. Which is totally false and painful.”
The experience illustrated to Beseisso the extra scrutiny Muslim women constantly face. “They are doubly judged. If you wear a hijab and you laugh out loud or wear vibrant colours, you are told you are being disrespectful,” she says.
“I experienced this and now I just need to talk about it. I am 30 years old, this is part of my personal growth, and I now have the guts to express this. I believe in human rights, and the idea that someone pays a higher personal tax for being from a certain gender doesn’t make sense to me. It is unjust.”
Beseisso says not to misconstrue her indignation, though. “It comes from a place of love for my culture and the Arab world,” she says.
Her seven-year career as a YouTube vlogger has yielded plenty of vibrant content that celebrates Arab culture and corrects regional misperceptions. Popular videos in her Fly With Haifa YouTube channel, which has more than 800,000 subscribers, include a spirited takedown of the way Hollywood represents the Middle East. For Instagram, she marshalled 10 Arab social media personalities to take part in last year’s Don’t Rush viral beauty challenge.
A former television presenter, Beseisso says social media remains the premier platform to capture the depth of Arabic youth culture. “What television offers you is a team and a chance to delegate and share the workload, while with social media you are basically a one-person operation, and the work never stops,” she says.
“But it is places like YouTube, for example, where you will see well-travelled young Arabs with different personalities and perspectives. I am a mix of all of that. We are part-pop culture and part-tradition, and most importantly, we are not afraid to try.”
I believe in human rights, and the idea that someone pays a higher personal tax for being from a certain gender doesn’t make sense to me