Sugar Cubes

Manama: Women’s rights activist Ghada Jamsheer on Thursday hailed a court decision to jail a wife-beater as “a right step to end an endemic plight”.

“I applaud the decision because it will certainly help to put an end to the widespread phenomenon of battering women,” Jamsheer told Gulf News.

“What is needed is that more people become involved in the drive to minimise and eliminate domestic violence,” she said.

Jamsheer was commenting on a three-month sentence handed by a local judge against a Gulf national who broke the arm of his Bahraini wife and mother of their seven children for refusing to have intercourse with him.

According to press sources, the court case papers said the wife reported her husband to the public prosecutor after he abused her physically and broke her arm.

The wife said that her husband became infuriated after she told him that she could not have proper physical contact with him because she was menstruating.

But the husband refused to be put off by the wife’s claims and insisted that marital relation was a right granted by God and he wished to exercise his right.

The argument between the spouses developed into a fight and the husband started beating his wife until he broke her arm.

The husband, who does not live in Bahrain but makes regular visits there, told the judge that he had a divine right to beat his wife whenever she disobeyed him.

The unimpressed judge said that the man would have to pay 300 Bahraini dinars (Dh2,926) if he wanted to avoid jail.

[Source]

Thumbs up! we need more people like this judge.

I wonder when are some men going to understand that beating their wives is not a right given by Islam. The beating mentioned in Qura’an was interpreted in more than one way by scholars, however, the fact that the Prophet (PBUH) had never layed a hand on any of his wives nor had any of his companions defame the claims for an Islamic right of men to beat their wives to begin with. In the worst scenarios, beating was described by hitting with a Siwak, smart people will know that what is meant is the emotional effect because I do not think a sane man will actually carry a Siwak and hit his wife once or twice, it sounds like a joke. A wise man will deliver the message of being disatisfied or annoyed in so many ways, beating is definitely not one of them, if anything at all, abusing your spouse whether emotionally or physically is inhumane.

Women in Saudi Arabia have taken part in an election, both as voters and as candidates, for the first time

Seventeen women and 54 men are competing for the 12 seats on the board of the Chamber of Commerce in the Saudi business capital, Jeddah.

Voting takes place over four days - for the female candidates voting was on Saturday and Sunday, while voting for the men is on Monday and Tuesday.

A BBC correspondent says the vote is seen by liberals as a sign of progress.

BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy says the election is of great symbolic importance in a conservative country where women’s lives are restricted in many ways.

[Via BBC]

Congratulations!

Scientists identify how women’s figures have changed in 50 years

The fashion industry is ignoring the changing shapes of women’s bodies, a study claims today. Designers and manufacturers still insist on making clothes that fit the traditional hourglass figure, when women’s shapes are more likely to be top-heavy, rectangular or pear-shaped.

The research found that although only 8 per cent of women now had the sort of hourglass figure flaunted by curvaceous 1950s film stars such as Sophia Loren, designers and manufacturers continued to make clothes to fit a slim-line version of that figure.

[Via The Independent]

As long as they continue making clothes for those 8% I have no problem…

In ancient Greece, Helen of Troy, the instigator of the Trojan War, was the paragon of beauty, exuding a physical

brilliance that would put Cindy Crawford to shame. Indeed, she was the toast of Athens, celebrated not for her kindness or her intellect, but for her physical perfection. But why did the Greek men find Helen, and other beautiful women, so intoxicating?

In an attempt to answer this question, the philosophers of the day devoted a great deal of time to this conundrum. Plato wrote of so-called “golden proportions,” in which, amongst other things, the width of an ideal face would be two-thirds its length, while a nose would be no longer than the distance between the eyes. Plato’s golden proportions, however, haven’t quite held up to the rigors of modern psychological and biological research — though there is credence in the ancient Greeks’ attempts to determine a fundamental symmetry that humans find attractive.

Symmetry is attractive to the human eye

Today, this symmetry has been scientifically proven to be inherently attractive to the human eye. It has been defined not with proportions, but rather with similarity between the left and right sides of the face Thus, the Greeks were only partially correct.

By applying the stringent conditions of the scientific method, researchers now believe symmetry is the answer the Greeks were looking for.

Babies spend more time staring at pictures of symmetric individuals than they do at photos of asymmetric ones. Moreover, when several faces are averaged to create a composite — thus covering up the asymmetries that any one individual may have — a panel of judges deemed the composite more attractive than the individual pictures (continue)

Beauty beyond symmetry

However, John Manning of the University of Liverpool in England cautions against over-generalization, especially by Western scientists. “Darwin thought that there were few universals of physical beauty because there was much variance in appearance and preference across human groups,” Manning explained in email interview. For example, Chinese men used to prefer women with small feet. In Shakespearean England, ankles were the rage. In some African tribal cultures, men like women who insert large discs in their lips.

Indeed, “we need more cross-cultural studies to show that what is true in Westernized societies is also true in traditional groups,” Manning said his 1999 article.

Aside from symmetry, males in Western cultures generally prefer females with a small jaw, a small nose, large eyes, and defined cheekbones - features often described as “baby faced”, that resemble an infant’s. Females, however, have a preference for males who look more mature — generally heart-shaped, small-chinned faces with full lips and fair skin. But during menstruation, females prefer a soft-featured male to a masculine one. Indeed, researchers found that female perceptions of beauty actually change throughout the month.

When viewing profiles, both males and females prefer a face in which the forehead and jaw are in vertical alignment. Altogether, the preference for youthful and even infant-like, features, especially by menstruating women, suggest people with these features have more long-term potential as mates as well as an increased level of reproductive fitness.

Scientists have also found that the body’s proportions play an important role in perceptions of beauty as well. In general, men have a preference for women with low waist-to-hip ratios (WHRs), that is, more adipose is deposited on the hips and buttocks than on the waist. Research shows that women with high WHRs (whose bodies are more tube-shaped) are more likely to suffer from health maladies, including infertility and diabetes. However, as is often the case, there are exceptions to the rule.

Psychologists at Newcastle University in England have shown that an indigenous people located in southeast Peru, who have had little contact with the Western world, actually have a preference for high WHRs. These psychologists assert that a general preference for low WHRs is a byproduct of Western culture.

Beauty and choosing a mate

Psychological research suggests that people generally choose mates with a similar level of attractiveness. The evolutionary theory is that by mating with someone who has similar genes, one’s own genes are conserved. Moreover, a person’s demeanor and personality also influences how others perceive his or her beauty. (continue)

The halo effect

In society, attractive people tend to be more intelligent, better adjusted, and more popular. This is described as the halo effect - due to the perfection associated with angels. Research shows attractive people also have more occupational success and more dating experience than their unattractive counterparts. One theory behind this halo effect is that it is accurate — attractive people are indeed more successful. (continue)

Related (you must check these out):

Try out FacePrint

Calculate your WHR

ABC News: Faces Like Our Own are the most Attractive

BBC News: Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder

Brain Study Shows Difference Between Beauty, Desire

Related tags: beauty, psychology, philosophy

By Jeff Howe

Ever notice that beautiful people with ugly personalities seem to become lessand less attractive with time? According to Leslie Zebrowitz, Ph.D., of Brandeis University, that’s because they do. When Zebrowitz compared personality tests taken by men and women over time with ratings of their attractiveness by objective observers, she discovered that men judged physically appealing in their youth were most likely to be sociable, agreeable adults. No surprise there. But women who had been gregarious as teens were deemed better-looking in their fifties than their aloof, unfriendly peers, regardless of their original physical appeal. These findings are intriguing, says Zebrowitz, because they run contrary to the popular notion that physical beauty has greater social consequences for women than for men. Says Zebrowitz: “it seems that the way a man looks influences the kind of personality he develops, but the kind of person a woman is influences the kind of appearance she develops.”

Source

Tags: smile

Academics in the UK claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women.

Depends on how you define cleverness.

Tags: women, health and science

LONDON (Reuters) - If you don’t understand soccer’s offside rule, don’t ask a man — find a woman.

British women are top of the table when it comes to knowledge about the game, relegating their menfolk to second spot, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Research found that 59 percent of women could correctly identify the offside law — one of the game’s hardest to comprehend — as opposed to just 55 percent of men.

Also 65 percent of women correctly used the title assistant referee, while 40 percent of men wrongly referred to the official as a “linesman.”

“I’ve never understood the big fuss surrounding whether girls know what they’re talking about when it comes to football because it was my mum who taught me the offside rule when I was a kid,” said Sky Sports presenter Helen Chamberlain.

However when it came to team strip, the men were way ahead. More than 80 percent of men could correctly identify the kits of the 20 Premiership teams compared to just 33 percent of women, the survey of 2,000 customers of sports bar Walkabout found.

Tags: Soccer

Rania Flees, ‘Won’t Come Back’

Beaten Saudi TV presenter flees

Breaking the silence

I only skimmed through the last article but I gotta tell you that woman is either so angry that she decided to get back at whome she thinks were the cause of her near-death incident or she’s simply taking advantage of that incident quite smartly.

This stat is based on your log of the last 100 pageloads. Increase your log size today!

TIP Click the little drill down arrow next to each result to show the users that used this keyword to find your website.

Did you prefer the old keyword analysis? That’s ok. We still have it, it’s just called “recent keyword activity” now.

	Num	Perc.	Search Term
	10	50.00%	rania al-baz
	3	15.00%	rania al baz
	1	5.00%	rania al-baz oprah
	1	5.00%	knafe
	1	5.00%	timbaland
	1	5.00%	what foods can’t you eat if you have high blood sugar
	1	5.00%	escorting in dubai
	1	5.00%	rania a;baz
	1	5.00%	فضائل سورة الكهف
	20	100.00%

These are the results of the last two days only, Al Baz has been receiving too many hits daily since the day I posted about her. Reputation of Saudi women in particular and Muslim and Arab women in general has suffered because of this woman and her host Oprah, who had intentionally interviewed Al-Baz and showed horrifying pictures of her injuries in an episode where proud happy women came from around the world to represent their nations. Stop Oprah!! from manipulating the image of women status in Islam

Tags: Oprah, Al-Baz

NOUAKCHOTT — Mariem Sow was a little girl when her sister Zeinabou choked to death in front of her while being force-fed camel’s milk by a family slave.

Beaten if she refused to swallow the rich diet of sweetened milk and millet porridge, Zeinabou was one of many Mauritanian girls fattened up because of an ancient belief that corpulent women make more desirable wives.

“As soon as my older sister was 12 they started force-feeding her so she would be plump by 15. They wanted to prepare her for marriage,” said Mariem, now 42, wrapped in white robes and reclining on cushions in her Nouakchott home.

The traditions of the desert are very much alive in Mauritania, an Islamic republic on the western edge of the Sahara whose people were still almost entirely nomadic when the country gained independence from France in 1960.

Wealthier families who have settled in the capital Nouakchott often keep a “khaima” — a nomadic tent — in the courtyard of their homes. Men and women walk the sandswept streets in flowing robes and headscarves.

Having a voluptuous wife and daughters — well fed to survive the rigours of a desert lifestyle — was long a visible sign of wealth and power among the country’s light-skinned Moors. It is still seen by many as a canon of beauty.

But with Lebanese satellite television broadcasting images of flat-stomached girls cavorting on beaches, and more Mauritanians travelling abroad, the vogue is starting to change.

Many Mauritanians believe it is unseemly for women to be seen engaging in any strenuous activity, but as dusk falls, chubby ladies shuffle self-consciously around the stadium in Nouakchott, their tracksuit trousers hidden under flowing “malhafa” robes.

“Sometimes I walk, sometimes I run. We come after dusk when the men have gone home,” said Fatimatou, a breathless 31-year-old, force-fed as a child but now trying to get down to 60 kg (132 lb). “It’s no longer the modern fashion to be overweight. Women have evolved. Now they work in offices and they have to be fit.”

Big is beautiful

More than one in five women in Mauritania, which straddles black and Arab Africa, were force-fed as young girls, according to a government survey from 2001, the latest available.

“Our society has this vision that a woman has to be fat to be beautiful. It is a canon of beauty,” said Marienne Baba Sy, head of a government commission that deals with women’s issues.

“If you’re a thin woman, people assume your family don’t look after you,” she told Reuters.

The force-feeding technique known as “gavage” — a French word more closely associated with fattening up geese to produce foie gras — is less widely practised than it used to be after the government launched campaigns to highlight the health risks.

But the cult of fatness has deep roots.

“My husband says he wants me to lose weight but he looks at fat women and I think he prefers going to bed with them,” said Nene Drame, 47, a writer working on a novel about force-feeding.

“The Mauritanian man is savage by nature. He likes something he can get his hands on,” she said.

“Gavage” left some women struggling to walk, not just because of their weight — which often tops 90kg — but because they were tortured as they were force-fed.

Some had their fingers or toes broken so the pain would distract them from having to swallow the milk and porridge.

Others had their feet crushed by a “zayar” — a wooden vice which would only be loosened once they ate.

“Above all it causes cardiac problems, problems during childbirth. Even from the point of view of work, obese women are less productive,” said Baba Sy.

“They get tired very quickly, out of breath. Psychologically it is very damaging. You can’t do the same things as other women — you can’t even pray properly,” she added.

Some children were tied down while being fed and were forced to eat whatever they vomited up during the ordeal, Baba Sy said.

The force-feeding often lasted years.

Horse pills

The 2001 survey estimated around 10 percent of women aged 15-19 were force-fed as young girls, down from 35 per cent among 45-54 year-olds.

Although brutal “gavage” may be on the decline, the pressure to conform to traditional notions of beauty has given rise to a new phenomenon in which girls take pills to stimulate their appetite or animal steroids to boost their girth.

Packets of large pink pills made in Pakistan and marked “not for human consumption” are laid out on upturned boxes under trees on the edge of one of Nouakchott’s main markets.

“Normally they’re just for animals but we sell them to women too. We sell them for 50 ouguiya (20 US cents) to people who buy for their animals,” said one seller, declining to be named.

“But for women we sell them for 200 ouguiya a tablet. They buy three or four at a time,” he said, just before a young teenage couple walked up to make a purchase.

Shocked by the death of her sister, Mariem Sow has stayed slim and was even asked to apply for a modelling contract when she went to Paris after marrying a French man.

Via Jordan Times

Count your blessings girls! :@

Tags: Mauritania