The Golden Mask: Tipping the Belly Dancer in America

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

The Golden Mask: Tipping theBelly Dancer in America Andrea Deacon In the mid-1950s, when belly dance was undergoing a resurgence in American1 popular culture, the curious consumer could whet her or his appetite for this foreign art with the music of Mohammed El-Bak kar, whose "Arabian" sound was featured in the Broadway show Fanny} The liner notes of his six albums, replaying almost every Orientalist view the Western world could offer,situated the dance and its music variously in the harems of the Sultan of Baghdad, or in "the ancient slave market, [where] maidens performed sensuous and provocative dances," or in Port Said, where "dancing girls who per form [ed] their ancient ritual for a few modest coins (and for a little more ... [took] you into their tent or hut for more enjoyable entertainment)."3 This association of belly dancing and venality, or even outright sexual sal ability, took its place among other persistent patriarchal and colonial fantasies of access; erotic consumerism here shed the implication of deviancy, and sexual indulgences could be purchased not only easily but also for a bargain price. El-Bakkar's albums are out on CD now, reissued for the bene fitof the rising population of Western belly dancers, although no one has bothered to revise those liner notes, which would make any right thinking belly dancer wince. Now, in the 2000s, American belly danc ers, a predominantly white, middle-class, and female population, are FeministStudies39, no. 1. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 71 72 Andrea Deagon the empowered buyers of all things Arabian on the American market. El-Bakkar's album covers and liner notes sometimes amuse and often offend them (or perhaps I should say "us," since I am one) for paint ing the dancer as a creature of disempowered yet eager sexuality: slave girl, harem girl, or bargain-basement whore. The self-defining discourse of the belly dance community in the United States seeks to steer clear of slave markets and harem girls, focusing instead on women's community, women's history, feminine solidarity, personal enjoyment, sensual experience, cultural exchange, and artistry, often with an interlacing of goddess theology.4 Yet the specters of venality, marketable sexuality, and the sex business refuse to go away. Whether on internet forums or in classes and workshops, American belly danc ers are on guard against sexually tainted dance practices, which they frame vehemently as notbellydance. Lift up the belly dancer's veil of sen sual self-actualization and you see a community into which the con testations surrounding sex and purity, erotic display and self-expres sion, and agency and objectification weave an enervating texture. Nowhere is this more evident than in both the discourse and practice of body tipping. Tipping a belly dancer by inserting bills into her costume is a practice found in contemporary Turkey and to some extent Egypt, the two focal points of twentieth- and twenty-first century belly dance performance.5 It has become the most common form of tipping in the United States, unlike other countries in the West and Pacific Rim. Belly dancers' views on this practice foreground how the social identity of the American belly dancer (white, female, middle class) and the discourse of empowerment that fuels the belly dance movement (that it is liberating, empowering, sensual, spiri tual, and woman-centered) grate against the common Euro-Amer ican and Arab-American understanding of belly dance primarily as a commodified form of erotic display. Furthermore, since belly dancing is a display or evocation of Arab femininity (however unintentionally on the part of Western belly dancers), body tipping specifies a power dynamic in which the European consumer beckons the dancer over with something as valueless as a one-dollar bill and, in conveying it, inserts his finger into the colonial pie. The firstpart of this paper examines several historical accounts of tipping belly dancers, illustrating deeply ingrained and still-active tropes that situate the Western subject in relation to the multivalent Andrea Deagon 73 figure of the dancer. The second part critiques the discourse about tipping within the American belly dance community, in which tropes of economic necessity, patriarchal power dynamics, personal empowerment, and cultural difference...