Gere'd Up to Get with Hegazy

So a little over a month ago the ladies of Egypt got a look at Ahmed Ali spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Facebook was alight with commentary on all of Ali’s hmm, not insights...was it commentary? No... His ass. Women wanted his ass. Yeah.

I mean it makes sense. Who doesn’t want a well built, clean man in uniform who can speak confidently and is trained to kill you? That’s sexy, right? I’m sure all that hand-to-hand combat training could come in handy in the bedroom especially when compared to the average Egyptian man’s favourite position in bed: “lie down.”

Now enters a new spokesman, this one for the president, Mostafa Hegazy. Again the women of Egypt swoon. One of my colleagues at CairoScene goes so far as to say he looks like Richard Gere.

This all provides a very important lesson for people abroad, particularly for the men. Most Egyptian men, not that great. If a man with a visibly receding hair line, rounded cheeks and a well-kept mini ‘fro can be compared to Richard Gere (who looks nothing like that and, from my straight perspective, decidedly better), that puts in perspective how hot the competition is. We’re not.

The fact that every time a spokesman who doesn’t spit when he speaks or have missing teeth comes on TV and finds he has thousands if not tens of thousands of women imagining all the things besides “lie down” that he’s prepared to do to them, tells you one thing: competition is far from fierce.

The lesson from all this shouldn’t be that women here are superficial, nor that they’re blind. I know it appears like that because the Hegazy-Gere comparison requires Absinthe goggles rather than beer ones. A middle aged balding man who can speak English without saying bleez and dress himself is, in Egypt, “incredibly sexy.” I really should be doing better dating. I’m not even middle aged.

Are you guys hearing this? I think the lesson is that all of us Egyptian guys need to step up our game, just a tad.

Now, if you’re a guy from abroad looking to impress a lady, welcome to land of low expectations. That should be our new tourism campaign. Our women will think you’re great because our men....just have a look at the citizen we believe most resembles “Richard Gere” and you’ll get the picture.