that femininity — not mannish-ness — is one of the diseases of our women, not in Lebanon alone but in the whole Arab East.

And what is this femininity that tongues prattle of and the propaganda promotes? It is the collection of the traditional attributes of the enslaved women of yesterday. It is bashfulness and false coyness, the drowsy glance and the languid eyelids — sung by the poets since ancient times — and the slow, dragging gait, the alluring, artificial smiles, affectation in speech and in gesture, excess in adornment and display and the jingling of jewelry, the long dress that hampers movement and the long hair whose dressing consumes several hours, the flight from work because it takes off weight,

and stinginess (1), and keeping to the house and holding sessions of chatter and backbiting —

And what else?

This is the femininity they want to save, and I defy the researchers to find in the women of yesterday qualities better than those I have named. As for the women who excelled all others in times past, they are the ones who pierced the veil of femininity and broke out of its traditions: the likes of Zenobia, Khawla bint al-Azwar, and Joan of Arc, who mounted horses and led armies; the queens — Elizabeth of England, Christina of Sweden, and Catherine of Russia — who rivaled men in ruling; Florence Nightingale, who left her father's house to serve the wounded and comfort the sick; and Madame

Curie, who entered by a door of science that no woman had entered before her.

Femininity, in its common mean-ing, is nothing but woman's exaggeration in displaying her weakness. As for the femininity we ought to preach — the femininity of today — it is energy and lightness of movement, frankness, truthfulness, thought, and confidence in oneself.

But what have we to do with sayings and propaganda? The forces that govern man's course are stronger than words — sweeping like torrents, and no one can stand in their way.

(Delivered over Radio Lebanon)

(1) They have said: "Stinginess is blameworthy in men, praisewor-thy in women!"