FAIL

One of the things I'll certainly bring home is the big, bubble-wrapped-with-a-bow-and-shiny-paper-present of memories of tourist and expat FAILS we've experienced here and during travels. Now, it's one thing to be inappropriately dressed for the weather in Italy or sporting an offbeat or unique ensemble in Paris. It's another thing entirely to be caught wearing a normal everyday summer outfit here in the desert (outside of the sacred walls of the Hilton - aka buraimi expat oasis), where anonymity and modesty rule the runways of mall fashion.

What this often means for those of us not qualified to wear a full-time abayya (Never have to pick out an outfit! Always appropriate!) or sheila (Never have to do your hair! Not fair!), is that often we end up wearing maternity-looking long shirts over loose-fitting jeans or 1st-grade-sunday-school-teacher-inspired long skirts (yes, ugh, denim...sometimes kahki). Always long sleeves, always long pants. Fashion, my friends, is not something I've conquered here.

So, you have the choice of looking a bit frump (some of my friends with longer time spent in the area have mastered it), or being inappropriate to a degree (some have bucked it - with varying results). Every person has to decide their own levels. I, for example, will sometimes wear a knee-length dress with a sweater in Dubai or I may even just opt for short sleeves with my jeans. This aggression will not stand (in Buraimi), man.

Other expats and visitors have shown notably less caution in their decisions. Sometimes they're uncautions in the style choosing things like gold lamee. Sometimes they're uncautions in choosing things that are revealing like tube tops. Sometimes it's both (Gold? Lamee? Tube Top? Whaaa...? Ooohhhh, she's English...). Always it's a FAIL.

I wish that Miriam (a fellow collector) and I had more concrete examples to bring back with us (you can't always be at the ready with a hulking D90 in the mall), but in Egypt I found a couple of stand outs that will have to tide us over and prod our memories when the summer winds warm back home and the inappropriately dressed come out...

This is a rare sighting - the maleFAIL. Yes, they are often dressed in unsightly manners, but it's much harder to achieve levels of appropriateness-FAIL for men. But this guy...Wraps. It. Up.

Skinny white dude

In no sleeves

SHORT SHORTS!

Guthra

Extra bonus neg for amount of white, hairy leg exposed and possible wedge-picking

This is also a special kind of FAIL. It's the tourist FAIL. Look at this photo and you may notice that, yes, she's dressed in a sort-of-modest manner. Look closer and you'll see the FAIL.

WEARING the belly dancing scarf with coins that jingle while you walk (obviously purchased at souk prior to arrival at monument)

WEARING the matching headpiece (the one that is a woven/beaded skullcap of glitter and coins and comes free with the belly-dancing-scarf because you are a good, good friend of the stall owner who sold you this monstrosity and promised you the "local" price. HINT: Locals don't wear this.)

This post is dedicated to Miriam and all the attempting to be appropriate girls out there. It's also dedicated to Paula, Jenny V. and Jessie V, just in case you needed any help on the true meaning of FAIL!