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The passing of
bodily seasons
Soumaya
Naamane Guessous, Moroccan sociologist, university professor, author of Printemps
et automne sexuels (Eddif, 2000) and Au-delà de toute pudeur, Eddif,
1988. |
A young bride in traditional dress.
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Life
may be short or long. It all depends on how you live it.
Paulo
Coelho, Brazilian writer (1947-)
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For
Moroccan young women, sexual awakening rhymes with danger. In the countryside, girls
are often married off at 14 and deemed old by 30. But in cities, the young are starting
to hold their ground
During recent fieldwork
in Bni Meskine, in southern Morocco, I felt disarmed, worthless and at a loss before
the cruelty of what turned out to be a veritable slave market. For the first time
in my life, I lied to conduct my study. My ploy: Sanaa, one of my students, is seeking
to marry off her two brothers with 13- or 14-year-old girls. As for myself, I’m supposedly
looking for a spouse for my uncle, widowed at 70. My goal: to prove that this market
indeed exists, and that parents in the countryside pay little heed to the legal age
of 15 for marrying their daughters.
In this region and many others, the smasyra, brokers who supply city dwellers with
child labour, are also sought out to find potential brides. From one home to the
next, we witnessed scenes like these…
We are greeted by three women belonging to different generations: the matriarch,
her daughter-in-law and her 14-year-old granddaughter. The young girl busily skirts
around us, wiping the table, putting away our shoes, shaking the cushions. I observe
her, a budding beauty, her body charged with promise. Is her father prepared to betroth
her without a marriage license? “Yes, he married the eldest when she was 14. The
girls have nothing to do. As soon as their zmane (destiny) arrives, we marry them.”
Then the paternal uncle greets us. “I’ll give you 15 girls if you want. They are
educated, never lift their eyes from the ground nor raise a voice of complaint. They’ll
put up with anything without a whimper.”
Another home: the wife of the household greets us. She is pregnant with her seventh
child. “Choose the one you like. They’ve all had the same education. All they do
is work. They never go out of the house. They get pregnant on their wedding night.”
I felt like screaming at the thought that these girls would be married so young,
savagely deflowered and left disgusted by the sexuality forced upon them. Men keep
a close watch on their daughters. Their honour lies in controlling the female body.
Women uphold this tradition by muzzling their own bodies which they learn to do from
puberty on. Female sexuality is channeled by marrying off young nubile bodies. Such
dramatic practices are part and parcel of everyday life in a countryside mired by
poverty and isolation, where nine out of ten women are illiterate.
Our research in Casablanca found that in cities, puberty is no less of a painful
experience. Young girls are taught by their mothers, aunts and grandmothers an outdated
sex education revolving around taboos. The young woman’s body beholds danger. Her
sexuality does not belong to her. She cannot be entrusted with something so fragile
yet potentially explosive, for it can lead to her loss and that of her whole family.
So every sexual drive must be stifled. As one young woman explained, “My mother controlled
my movements. I was told not to jump or to spread my legs for fear of losing my virginity.
I was terrified by my sexuality.”
Double
standards
While
older women once went into shock when they started bleeding unknowingly, the younger
generation is better informed about menstruation. Yet they still suffer from a pervasive
sense of anguish. From the outset, teenagers live in conflict with their bodies.
Menstrual blood is impure, dirty, shameful. “I learned that it was haram [a sin]
to let anyone see the blood because God punishes this severely.” Menstruation provokes
a feeling of rejection of the body: “I feel dirty, I no longer take care of myself,
I hate myself.”
There has been some progress in the cities where the age of marriage has been pushed
back to about 26 years old. Still, society strictly condemns extra-marital sex, a
taboo that in practice, only applies to women. When one student told me that girls
who made love before marriage were prostitutes, I asked, “So are you a virgin?” I
reminded him that the proscription applied to both sexes. Disarmed, he replied, “No!
Religion applies to girls, tradition to boys!”
Even though a Moroccan woman can expect to live longer than her husband to the ripe
age of 70, her femininity is ephemeral. Society kills her sexuality prematurely by
imposing a “social age” after which she is no longer considered seductive. At 31,
according to men, she is past the age of getting married. At 40, she is old. A blossom
barely in flower, she becomes an elder in a body without promise. By the time she
reaches 47–the average age of menopause–she no longer exists as a woman. She is banished
to live roughly 23 years within an asexual body. Amputated of her femininity, she
must grieve her feelings of desire and seduction.
She renounces her sexual role and devotes herself to playing mother and grandmother.
Having put her body at the service of her husband and procreation, she can now only
exist through a soul that has to be purified. Religion becomes her refuge, as if
Islam stifled desire. Illiterate older women may renounce their bodies in this way,
but young women are reacting otherwise. Even mothers are now denouncing procreation.
“I refuse to see my daughter live like me. So many pregnancies take their toll. She
has to maintain her figure and stay beautiful,” says a woman of 65. “I refuse to
be like my mother,” chants the younger generation. Indeed women today have an average
of three children, down from seven 40 years ago.
Could this break the vicious circle? Young women–48 percent of the Moroccan population
is under 20–are becoming emancipated, playing more sport and keeping an eye on their
figure. Beauty cannons have changed, despite the pressure and expectations of older
generations. “A beautiful woman must be well-endowed. Today, girls have no more charm,
they’re as thin as reeds,” laments an elderly peasant. “You can see their bones–they
must prick in bed.”
The divorce rate is rising among the young. It’s a sad reality, but one which proves
that this population “is standing up for itself.” Traditions may still be entrenched,
but young women are cultivating body and mind. Through education and work, they are
gaining their independence. “I’m not afraid of old age. Unlike my mother I won’t
let myself be treated like a useless old thing. I earn a living and have interests,”
says one young woman. “I don’t only exist as a wife and mother. My life is in my
hands.” |
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