NapoleonXIV
Banned
Make Near East Belly Dancing a necessary part of every American girl's social graces and a required skill in the phys ed curriculum of all American high schools and colleges by 1970. POD anytime after 1900.
All Girls Belly Dancers
- Thread starter NapoleonXIV
- Start date
With the right girls that would be a truly wonderful thing to see ... but I can't help but recall some women who could make me claw my own eyes out if I saw them belly-dancing.
Okay got one.... during WWII many service men brought back wives from Britain, what if this happened with men that were on garrison duty in Arabia? The PoD would be a victory at El Almain but defeat afterwards for the Panzers Britain sends troops to Arabia to help protect Oil in the region and voila....
Hashasheen
Banned
dont diss the burqa mate
, it is a bit alluring , you know the challenge, and the mystery, girls in burqa are Anaxagoras
Banned
I beg to differ. The ones who look like they don't just haven't been exercising them.
You mean in the same Christianity is the norm of the world today ?
To bad the PoD must be post-1900...
http://www.clockworksky.net/gurkani_alam/ah_mughal_top.html
I heartily endorse this thread and/or timeline!
Belly Dancing is actually quite popular in Britain (like 'Home Pole Dancing' is popular in the US - as a keep-fit regimen, but sadly as a complete travesty as anything of a sexual act). There's even also a sub-division, of gothic Belly Dancing. Which I'm attempting to learn
Belly Dancing is actually quite popular in Britain (like 'Home Pole Dancing' is popular in the US - as a keep-fit regimen, but sadly as a complete travesty as anything of a sexual act). There's even also a sub-division, of gothic Belly Dancing. Which I'm attempting to learn
David S Poepoe
Banned
Maybe things will be better have ten beers.
However, you do have a valid point. I went to a sci-fi/fantasy convention years ago and know there are some chicks that don't look good in chainmail. They were like little beached whales walking about in chainmail - which barely contained them or shielded others from them. UGH!
Hendryk
Banned
I don't think you need Islam to popularize belly dancing any more than you need, say, Catholicism to popularize tango or salsa. Whether you even need exposure to the general culture in which belly dancing developed is debatable, though I think it would help if said culture became fashionable.
One possibility would be for musical movies from the Middle East and India to be exported to the US in a big way in the 1950s and 1960s. Just as Asian martial arts were largely popularized by cheap Hong Kong flicks, one could see girls flocking to the latest movie from Cairo and deciding to learn the moves. Before long self-styled belly dancing coaches would set up shop, many of them underqualified but as time goes by, they would be replaced by people with genuine credentials.
Then it would be the 1980s with the fitness craze, and women would realize that apart from making them seductive on the dance floor, belly dancing also keeps them fit.
I could fancy watching a girl belly dancing to Dead Can Dance...There's even also a sub-division, of gothic Belly Dancing. Which I'm attempting to learn
Women belly dancers are actually supposed to be full-bodied, rather than the thin and muscular women we seem to associate with in the West.
Never been to Britain, have you?
The only people smaller than a size 12 here are pre-teens...
Never been to Britain, have you?
The only people smaller than a size 12 here are pre-teens...
Or (wannabe) supermodels...
So true.
On the one hand, think, for example, of Scarlett Johanssen (sp?)--and on the other, think Rosie O'Donnell.
Yeah, it does seem like the only women who ever wear chainmail bikinis are the ones who should never, ever wear chainmail bikinis.
OK, how about this.
In 1920, America decides to hold the World Fair to end all World Fairs, a celebration of the end of WW1 and an invitation for all the world to live in peace and harmony, make sure a horror like that never starts again yadda yadda yadda. Every nation is invited to send cultural teams over to New York to show the best attributes of their nations. Just to make a real success of it the US Government promises matching funds for said groups and the "new nations" formed under the Versailles Treaty get wholly subsidized by the US.
The fair is an enormous success. All the Middle Eastern nations, however, look at the US and Hollywood productions, guess what will please the US consumers most and include groups of belly dancers with their cultural exhibits. This causes an immense wave of popularity for belly dancing and the craze sweeps the United States.
It was a medical influence that turned what would probably have been a short-lived craze into a national icon. The changing styles and fashions for women had caused the old-fashioned corset to disappear and doctors were expressing concern that, without its support, women would start to suffer from muscular problems in their abdomens. A group of doctors devised a series of exercises for women that would improve their muscle tone etc. It didm't take long for people to realize that these "health-improving" exercises and belly-dancing were almost identical and that the latter was a painless way of doing the former. A further step in this direction was the growth of speak-easies during the prohibition era where women belly-dancing was a standard part of the floor show of these ilelgal drinking clubs.
In 1933, Doctor William Handzoff published a detailed paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in which he showed that women who practiced belly dancing suffered fewer birth complications than those who did not and had significantly better health overall. Furthermore, his study showed that the earlier woman started the belly-dancing exercises, the greater the benefits incurred. His paper won immediate acclaim and started serious pressure for belly dancing to be made part of the standard school curriculum for girls. It was also pointed out that belly-dancing cheer-leaders were much more effective at raising the enthusiasm for the teams they supported that their non-belly-dancing colleagues.
When the United States went to war in 1941, the drafting of a high proportion of the young male population meant a major influx of women into industry. Standards of physical fitness needed to work on, for example shipbuilding or aircraft construction were such that there was a surge of interest in improving the physical fitness of young women. By this time belly dancing was a well-established form of physical exercise for women and as part of the war emergency regulations, it was made compulsory in all American schools. In the chaos of the war, the arrest, trial and conviction of Doctor William Handzoff for faking his test results in order to drum up trade for his chain of belly dancing studios went unnoticed.
Post-war, belly dancing remained a part of the American high school curriculum for girls. There was a campaign against it in the 1960s by the women's liberation movement who claimed it was demeaning and exploitive but, by then, its alleged health benefits were so well established that the campaign faded away. Today, belly dancing remains the standard form of physical exercise for women in American high schools.
QED.