City Stars

We went to the “City Stars” (the MEGA mall of Egypt, ABSOLUTELY HUGE!) to grab some groceries and goof around this Thursday night since that is basically our “big night off” here. We were tired of staying in Gabel and so we decided to shake things up.

On a random side note, it blows my mind how this monstrosity of a mall and Gabel Asfar (the place where I live) can exist within 30 kilometers from each other. City Stars is this huge mall overflowing with overpriced brand names and teeming with affluent Egyptians, then there is Gabel Asfar. Guys are working their butts off for 15 hours a day driving a minibus to hopefully make 100 LE ($18) and there are donkey carts everywhere. The contrast is… for lack of a better word I will say shocking. I go to City Stars and it is almost like I’m back home, it was REALLY weird going into the mall the first time I was back because I hadn’t left Gabel in about a month.

Anyways, back on track, as we were walking around we heard this really loud hip-hop music and since we had time to kill we decided to go and check it out. It turned up that there was this modeling show going on and they had these two models riding up and down seven floors in the glass elevators. I don’t know what got into me, but it just sprang on me that I want to go and tell them they are beautiful. So I did. The first one was trying to do her, “I’m the Sex Goddess of the World face”, but when I said in the obnoxious manner that I did she actually broke her serious face for a second and giggled. The other one, no such luck. She gave me this cold stare and then just kept doing her rotation of poses. The big, bouncer guy by the elevator started joking around with me and was saying, “If you spent more time in Egypt, then you would see women like this everywhere.” I replied enthusiastically, “Oh ya, I’m suuuuuure!” but anybody who truly knows me would’ve picked up sarcasm everywhere.

It was funny to me as I walked away from the whole modeling gig going on. I had mixed feelings. I will admit that I was slightly proud that I got the courage to go say something random to the model, but more over-powering was my utter repulsion to the whole “glitz and glamour” of it all. It was so fake and just empty! There was such an empty, cold, lifeless look in that girl’s eyes. As I write this, I kind of feel a tinge of guilt for fueling her burning desire to be beautiful. Who cares if she is beautiful!? It would have been better if I’d told her she was more than that. I was probably out of hundreds of guys that was a enabler for her emptiness and, most likely, a regimented ED. Crap, another mistake.

I remember back when I was in 10th grade and I was walking through the mall with Missy, my girlfriend at the time, and this “modeling agent” came up to us and asked us if we were interested in making some money being models. He gave us a card and I ended up going to the thing which just turned up being a thing to teach you “how to be a model or advertiser”. My turn came and they had me animatedly read this thing to test my abilities. I finished reading it and I will never what the guy said to me, “Bud, you definitely need our program if you want to make it in the modeling world. You think you know how to walk? You can’t even crawl. We’ll teach you everything you need to know.” I remember walking out to the car and laughing with my Mom.

The whole “modeling world”, Hollywood, and hip-hop culture became empty to me after that. Ever since then, I’ve never really cared to meet anybody who is famous. I’m sure if I had the chance to take a picture with Halle Berry or Angelina Jolie, I’d do it in an instant, but there is no way I’d ever want to live their life. The condition of our culture is sickening. It is bent on chasing the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but completely neglects the true needs of people. That model didn’t need to ride up and down in an elevator to be beautiful or cut weight to wear her size “2” dress. Maybe, the girl was doing it to get away from poverty, I don’t know, but I do know she was empty. I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes if I was given a couple million dollars!

That whole experience last night re-opened my eyes to the following things:

1.I don’t want to be a wealthy person, spending money on more and more crap to keep up.
2.I hate shopping malls and I don’t want to get caught up in materialism. I saw a lot of clothes and thought “That would look good” and it just triggered the mentality of “I want it, I want it…” There’s so much better stuff I can spend my money on.
3.I don’t want to be a fake person and wrap myself up in an identity of exterior confidence based on sex appeal, money, etc. That isn’t what life is all about- forget pretending, I want to live!!