When a boy does it, his puny biceps are massaged with goat’s milk so that he can grow even stronger to hit someone else even harder in the future. When a girl (in a moment of frivolity understood only by little girls) decides to pull up her dress and show everyone her pretty underwear, she’s told not to be “besharam” and immediately bundled into a pair of trousers. If a boy, however, decides to pull his pants down in the middle of the street, everyone laughs and observes how “cute” he is (though he’ll probably never live the mortifying memory down, while everyone wants to forget the girl’s moment of public stripping forever).

The pressure mounts all the way through adolescence and into early adulthood. Boys are excused from every crime in the book as “boys will be boys” whether the crime ranges from illicit smoking to girlfriends to full on torture and murder. Girls, on the other hand, are made to feel like proclaimed offenders if they sit with their legs uncrossed in the television lounge. Of course, the training to become the perfect wife adds another sadistic dimension to the “nice training” of all girls in Pakistan. It’s like training for the Sugar Olympics: learn to do all the household chores, learn cooking, learn how to never answer back, learn how to look as though you wake up with full make up and blow dry every morning, learn how to lower your voice and blink up at people from coyly lowered eyelashes, say your prayers, cover your head, be nice, nice, nice till it comes out of your ears. If you don’t be nice, you’ll never get married and you’ll go to hell, which in some circles is regarded as the same thing. <Previous      Next>