Feminism and Belly Dance

By Andrea Deagon, Ph.D.

Differing Perspectives
When I was in graduate school in the early eighties, some friends and I presented a program on belly dance1 as part of
their dormitorys arts series. During coffee and conversation afterwards, a member of the audience said to me, I
consider myself a feminist, and I was offended by what you just did. I was surprised wed even have something like
this in our arts series. I answered, I consider myself a feminist too, and what we just did is a dance by and for
women and an expression of womens power. For a moment we just looked at each other, surprised that two
supposedly like-minded individuals could have such exactly opposite interpretations of what our dance had meant.
In 1999, as a professor who teaches in a Womens Studies program and a student of belly dance since the age of
sixteen, I am still comfortable with a feminist interpretation of the dance. I no longer describe it as by and for
women; while it can be, this description is too simplistic for a dance so concerned with the centers of sex, birth and
emotion. I now have mixed feelings about the word power as well, since it contains ideas of dominance and coercion
that are at odds with the dance as I understand it. But I feel strongly that belly dance is empowering for women. In
performance, I find a voice that expresses my essentially feminine life experience, and I become a conduit through
which my audiences can share my vision. Through my teaching, I help others find their own voices. This is womanly
power, and I wholeheartedly believe that this dance is good for women.
At the same time, I cannot ignore the fact that the dance as I know it sits awkwardly in Western culture, easily misread
as exhibitionistic and intended primarily to arouse men. Some dancers, to be sure, perpetuate this reading of the dance,
attracted to it because it offers opportunities to become the focus of sexually charged attention. Yet even when this
understandable desire2 was never the dancers main reason for dancing, or where it matured into a wiser understanding
of the uses of the dance, Western audiences expectations are hard to bypass. In my own experience as a performer, I
have danced for many audiences where my art connected, and we all shared a spirit of sensual, joyful, deep
togetherness. I have also danced for audiences in which some people participated in this dynamic, while others, locked
into their limited expectations, saw a come-on, a tease, a diminishment of the very respect for women I work so hard to
represent. My self-presentation and artistry did not change. But dancing in Americaor anywhere in the modern world
means dancing in a patriarchy, and conflicts between dancers and audiences perspectives invariably arise.
Belly dance exists at a point of conflict between womens expressions of fundamental truths, and patriarchal
interpretations of this expression. It is not an easy place to be. Within the profession, dancers heatedly discuss issues of
personal ethics, self-presentation, economics, and dealing with the public, which arise from this difficult merger of
belly dance and patriarchy. For me, these issues are illuminated by the work of feminists whose writings cast light on
the cultural underpinnings of many of our conflicts.
Feminists and belly dancers are natural allies in many ways. Feminists are particularly attuned to seeing womens
expression suppressed by patriarchal expectations. Feminists, like belly dancers, are used to being misunderstood.
While belly dancers are often portrayed as being exhibitionistic or sexually immoral, feminists are often tagged as manhaters, lesbians, radicals, control freaks and prudes. Feminists are particularly aware that public images of women can
be misleading, and that often there is a different story behind the story society embraces. Feminists are also attuned to
the forms of womens self-expression, and alert to the difficulties society has in hearing it.

This article is a brief sampling of some of the ways in which feminist thought can contribute to the issues important to
belly dancers. In some ways feminist thought supports the path belly dance has taken in the Western world, for Western
women.3 But it also has some hard questions to put to belly dancersinterrogations which ask them to consider
whether this very womanly form of expression sometimes contributes to patriarchal dynamics that ultimately
undermine its source of strength.
Feminism and Belly Dance
Feminism is, at its heart, a desire to move the world toward better treatment for women; it usually incorporates the idea
that a world which is better for women will also be better for men. But feminists have widely differing views on the
sources of our societys gender inequities and how to remedy them. While some feminists focus on economic and legal
issues, others consider more theoretical issues such as how we define masculine and feminine and to what extent
these ideas are natural as opposed to culturally encoded. Like any intellectual or political movement, feminism is
always growing and changing. As the world changes, feminists continually reassess their ongoing mission to better
womens lives. There are always new data, new ideas, and new perspectives.
Feminism works by the often-disconcerting technique of challenging the comfortable. Feminism has progressedas
have other civil rights movementsby the realization that accepted, comfortable ways of looking at things were not
necessarily right, fair, or healthy. Why should there be different restrooms for white and colored? Why should
women with college degrees be offered secretarial jobs, not management jobs? Why should women have to keep
different sexual standards from men? Along with this interrogation of obvious unfairness came interrogation of things
that seemed comfortable, but still pointed to underlying unfairnesses that could hold women back in the long run. Why
should it be common for men to pay for the date? For men to hold open doors for women? It was not that there was
anything inherently bad about having a door held open or a meal paid for, and it was not hatred of men or desire to be
free of them. It was the perception that these smaller assumptions underlay a system which paid women less, caused
them to be subjected to sexual harassment and domestic violence, and restricted their freedom of choice. Feminism
undertook to interrogate the whole system of assumptions about mens and womens relationships, hoping to make the
world a better place for both.
Both feminism and belly dance enjoyed an upsurgence in the early 1970s, suggesting that there is a community of
interest between the two. When womens liberation was pushing for more job opportunities, more personal freedom,
and more sexual freedom for women, belly dance offered freedoms that seemed to exemplify these goals. It encouraged
self-expression, it freed women from constraint in their physical movement4 , and it encouraged taking center stagea
liberating combination for women who had begun to see the demureness and agreeable blandness expected of them as
restrictive and wrong. There is no doubt that the dance was liberating to women. Those of us who taught in the
seventies saw it time and time again: women whose stiff, introverted body language showed lack of confidence were
suddenly opening up, shaking their hips, performing, expressing.5 Going to belly dance class was, for some, a
subversive act. Teaching in the South in the late seventies, I knew several of my students lied about where they were
going on Tuesday nights. I also knew of several women who danced themselves out of restrictive relationships.
Through belly dance, many women found a way to escape, for the class hour or on a wider scale, from societal bonds
that restricted them from power, adventure, exploration of their own sensuality, and claiming a public voice.
Over the past thirty years, Western belly dancers have come to an interpretation of their art that builds on these early
liberating self-discoveries. While many individual philosophies of dance exist, and while there is often heated
discussion about them within the community, on the whole dancers take a more or less feminist view of what they are
doing. Most dancers feel that they are dancing for themselves and for a wide audience, rather than to please and seduce

men. Most dancers, while aware of sometimes unpleasant professional competition, have a sense of sisterhood with
other dancers. Most dancers feel that this dance is particularly feminine, that what it says is said best by women, and
that it is a valuable form of self-expression for themselves and for women as a group.6 Dancers tend to discuss belly
dance history in terms of goddess worship and childbirth rituals, though other myths (harems and slave dancers) still
dominate the consciousness of non-dancers. Dancers also tend to embrace archetypes that embody central issues of
their own dancing: earth goddess, gypsy dancer7, sensual queen, sweet young nymph. Through these images, dancers
create feeling, move their audiences to new perceptions and ideas, express who they are, and open the door to
something deep and powerful in themselves and in their audiences. Dancers love this ability in themselves and rightly
see it as a power, a gift, a voice. On the whole, dancers experience tends to support the notion that this dance is good
for women: it is valuable as self-expression, and it is at heart a womans dance, reflective of womens essence, skills,
power, sexuality, and spirituality.
On the other hand, the view of the general public has not kept pace with the feminist bent of dancers images of their
art. Belly dance continues to be marginalized as an art form; a professional dancer may have a difficult time being
taken seriously. The chief venues for performance in the United States are parties (often requiring short bellygrams
rather than full length performances) and restaurants. The restaurant or social occasion is a very volatile venue for
dance performance. The dancer can play a powerful role, creating a deep sense of fellow-feeling and shared joy, or
move individuals deeply, or create a memory that will be treasured forever. Orand sadly, more likelyin a club or
restaurant, she may appear to most patrons as background to their dinner, best when not too obtrusive. She may
appear as a mild source of amusement, a fun way to tease and humiliate the birthday boy. She may appear as an
intrusive source of sexual energy. Regardless of her own intent, she may not be able to break through the
preconceptions of people who are inclined to see her multifaceted performance according to their own lights.
Consequently dancers experience varied and all too often negative public receptions. Western society takes various
distancing positions toward belly dance: ignoring, joking about, diminishing.
There is an essential failure of communication. The dancer feels her self-expression through dance is positive and
inclusive. She is aware that self-expression and creating good feeling are the work of belly dance. But for the typical
audience, the expectations of a patriarchal society rule. The dancer is in violation of societys norms: a woman who
takes on a public voice, who speaks through her body rather than hiding it, who brings sensuality and complexity into
their homes and restaurants.8 No wonder her audience so often fails to see what she is doing.
Dancers often complain bitterly about this breach, but accept it as inevitable. But feminists, committed to questioning
the status quo, have to pursue its implications. At the turn of the millennium, we are in a different world from the early
days of womens lib and wholehearted, innocent belly dance. Feminism now has moved on to question the
perspectives and accomplishments of the seventies: Did the liberation of the seventies succeed if more women have
careers nowbut work for less pay than men? What can be done to address the inequity? Did the sexual liberation of
the seventies give women the freedom to explore their own sexuality, or did it simply make them more available to
meet the sexual agendas of men?
Similarly, a feminist observing a typical Western belly dance performance today could have many reasons to feel
uncomfortable with it. Dancers may believe that the personal freedom encouraged by belly dance is de facto
empowering. But if the societal conditions for dance performance are disempowering, how should the dance be read?
In the only type of belly dance performance that most people see in the West, few of the dancers audience understand
what she is doing, and the atmosphere of her venue does not privilege her performance. The dancer may feel she has a
voice, but often she cannot speak so as to be heard. The feminist observer may well see a dancer dressed to express

glamorous sensuality, performing sensual movements, whose audience ranges from amused to uncomfortable to
delighted to disgusted, and whose voice is silenced by the clatter of plates and conversation.
It is as if belly dance and belly dancers have stepped right into the disempowered place patriarchy has prepared for
them: exposed but unheard.
It is not surprising that a feminist observer of dance in the West should have some hard questions. Is belly dance really
empowering for women, or does it simply bring women as sex objects into a different range of venues than before?
By performing mainly as party surprises and background to dinner conversation, have belly dancers sold out their art to
a patriarchal agenda? And while these questions might seem misguided to dancers who recognize their own power in
dance, they reflect issues often discussed within the profession: poor performing conditions, bad pay, quarrels with
management over costuming and self-presentation.
Feminist critique, based on a wealth of theoretical discussion, can help dancers resolve the breach between what they
are striving for and how they are perceived. In the rest of this article, I will discuss a few realms of feminist enquiry
that are pertinent to belly dancers: ownership of womens sexuality within patriarchy, acting in bad faith, and
essentialism. In each case, my discussion is only the tip of the iceberg, a thumbnail sketch of issues that are complex
and resist easy solutionsas all real problems do. It is my hope that dancers will pursue feminist ideas for insight into
central issues in their dancing.
Living in Patriarchy
Although patriarchy is often considered a pejorative term, it has a simple, straightforward meaning: a society in which
the concerns and characteristics of men generally are held as more valuable than the concerns and characteristics of
women. Such societies tend to be hierarchical, with higher-status men controlling the majority of resources and
dominating public expression. In modern America and Europe, we live in a patriarchy, as have all complex
civilizations since the Bronze Age. Our society has egalitarian inclinations and we pride ourselves on achieving some
level of equality between the sexes. Yet none of us were raised in a culture in which male and female were considered
equal, however egalitarian our families, schools, friends and employers may be. Consequently, on very deep levels, our
perceptions are still patriarchal. Patriarchal thinking infuses our language (e.g., our tendency to use he and his as
indefinites, and our tendency to say his/her or he/she rather than s/he or her/his when we aim for egalitarian
language). It infuses our subconscious expectations (e.g. the association of doctor with a male role and nurse with a
female role, even when many female doctors and male nurses exist). Our very definitions of what is feminine and
masculine have been formed by patriarchy and do not necessarily reflect the gender expectations of non-patriarchal
societies. All of our assumptions were formed by a world in which womens ways are not centralizedso much so that
it may be difficult for us to know ourselves.
Because it is so hard to escape the influence of our patriarchal upbringing, we may fall into modes of thought that seem
empowering but are ultimately patriarchal. For example, the movie G I Jane shows a woman as tough as any man, a
seemingly empowering portrayal. But at the same time, it presents ideas associated with women (gentleness,
compromise, cooperative rather than confrontive behavior) as inadequate or ineffective or less important than the
confrontation and conflict associated with men. By cheering on the heroine, we support a patriarchal vision that
ultimately undermines women as a whole.9 Just as one can question G I Jane, one can question belly dancers
acceptance of their venues. Is a woman performing in a nightclub where she is perceived as a sex object by many
patrons and underpaid by the management really pursuing a healthy agenda for women, or is she promoting the
patriarchal expectations that undermine her self-expression through art?

Belly dancers often look to long-ago matriarchies as the source of belly dance. But what is historically observable is
that the form of belly dance now, including the specific ways in which women are privileged as its performers, has
taken shape along patriarchal lines. Consequently, the basic form of the dance, and our sense of the rightness of women
dancing sensuously for an audience, were formed by patriarchy.
One of the central truths of patriarchy is that it reifies womens sexuality (i.e. makes it an ownable, buyable thing). This
process is observable in early societies formal exchanges of women, disproportionate use of women as slaves, and
articulation of bride prices and unequal property rights within marriage, as well as by the early development of
prostitution in complex civilizations.10 Our own society maintains many of these inequities. Consequently there is an
undertone in gender relationships that while men own their own sexuality, womens sexuality is for men, directed at
fulfilling mens desires rather than womens own. Womens sexuality is available to men through prostitution, sexually
explicit performance, and, on a milder level, in sensual performances by women such as belly dance.11
To be sure, women perform this dance for both men and women, and the women who perform it probably feel that they
own their own sexuality. All the same, in our society women are appropriate awakeners of sexuality for us, while men,
whose sexuality is less comfortably reified, fulfill this role far less commonly.12 Consequently, it can be argued that
sensual dancing by womenincluding belly danceis a product of a culture that subjugates women sexually, and
(poisoned fruit from a poisoned tree) supports the exploitation of women. When some feminists lump belly dance
together with stripping and topless bars as degrading to women, it is the fundamental inequity they object to: womens
sensual dance arises from a perspective in which womens sexuality is owned by men.
It is my own feeling that belly dance as performance is subversive. It allows women to seem to conform to patriarchal
expectations while at the same time challenging them through powerful self-expression. But the problem with
subversive intent and seeming conformity is that they play across a dangerous edge. There is a threat to the dancers
integrity implicit in working in a situation where the agendas of others are contrary to her own. One is that she will be
being dragged into compromise. For example, the management wants a sultan act. Although the dancer feels
uncomfortable with it, she goes along. Although she feels uncomfortable with receiving tips in her costume, she takes
them, because that is the only way to make any money dancing in the local venues.
An even greater danger is that the dancer sells out without knowing it. She forms an idea of what is acceptable (15
dollars a show, tips in her costume, last minute calls from the management, occasional sexual harassment from the
patrons) based not on an image of truth for herself, but a degraded image of what a dancer is and does. Because she
accepts, she does not interrogate. Or, she does not interrogate because she is afraid of losing something she has: the
gratification of performing, even within a system that does not respect her. But in giving in without interrogating, she
gives up something of herself.
In her influential book The Second Sex13 , Simone de Beauvoir discusses the consequences of this kind of failure. After
discussing how our culture identifies men as self or subject and women as other or object, de Beauvoir builds on
the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartres notion of bad faith (i.e. cultivating a deliberate blindness to paincausing truths that ultimately makes us less than fully conscious). She describes a situation in which a woman on a date
reaches a moment in which she must either engage in a real flirtation that will lead to something more, or decide to end
it. In de Beauvoirs narrative, this moment comes when the man takes her hand. But in order to preserve her enjoyment
of the situation as she imagines itnot as it really isshe leaves her hand in the mans, and does not notice that she is
leaving it. In this moment of bad faithwhere she abandons her responsibility to be true to herselfshe loses
something of herself. By abandoning her responsibility to act, she lets herself become an object rather than a thinking,

acting being. An unconscious object cannot be a conscious subject. By failing to face reality, she contributes to
societys inclination to diminish her.
When a belly dancer continues to work in difficult and unsupportive venues, is she acting in bad faith as de Beauvoir
describes it? Is she supporting the patriarchy that disrespects her? Is she submitting to objectification by her failure to
acknowledge the realities of her condition? Or is she doing the right thing by continuing to speak where she may or
may not be heard? De Beauvoirs argument has been much discussed and critiqued by modern feminists. Yet the idea of
responsibility to recognize unspoken dynamics is of undeniable importance in how dancers address their performance
situations. Here especially, the perspectives of de Beauvoir and her critics and supporters can provide perspective for
dancers engaged in difficult discussions of working conditions and venues.
Essentialism
One of the tenets supporting a feminist interpretation of belly dance is that it is an essentially feminine form. This
notion is commonly expressed by dancers, and is also often heard among the more enlightened elements of the general
public. When dancers place the roots of belly dance in goddess worship or birth ritual, they express the idea that this
dance receives its vital power from an ultimately feminine force. They may even express the idea that feminine modes
of thought and performance (e.g. sensual and emotional freedom, intuitive response, and community) are superior to
the masculine modes which drive patriarchy.
Those who privilege feminine ways of thinking and attributes over those perceived to be masculine are in
an essentialist mindset.
Essentialismthe belief that women and men are fundamentally differentseems entirely justified by our culture, as
does the idea of feminine values that are distinct from the dominant patriarchal values of our society. However, other
cultures have different ideas about what is male or female behavior; there is no real justification for our conviction
that our beliefs about masculine and feminine behavior are natural or universal. Is this dance really feminineor is it
only feminine as patriarchy defines it? By empowering the feminine, do we disrespect the universal because of our own
adherence to patriarchal distinctions?
While our dance often privileges modes of expression we label feminine, essentialism itself is problematic.
Rosemarie Tong summarizes some objections to it:
Essentialist claims about what makes certain groups of people the way they are (for example, women, blacks, Jews),
are the political-philosophical constructs of conservatism. The history of essentialist argument is one of oppressors
telling the oppressed to accept their lot in life because thats just the way it is. . . . By agreeing that women are a
priori nurturing and life giving . . . [we] are buying into the male-dictated dichotomies [we] are trying to avoid.14
The empowering, yet essentialist, interpretations of the feminine we see so often in belly dance are problematic because
they reverse patriarchal valuations of women while reinforcing their essence. If we believe women are a priori sensual,
expressive, life-giving, and empowered to relieve pain through their dancing, do we limit womens ability to express
other emotions, other modes of being? Do we diminish the rights of men to express these supposedly feminine ideas
without giving up their masculine identity? Does an essentialist view of belly dance as feminine ultimately empower or
limit women in their artistic vision and self-exploration? If you believe that essentialist views of feminine and
masculine are natural, then privileging the feminine is a feminist act. Yet if you believe that these views are encoded by
patriarchy, then they must be questioned as potential limitations to both women and men.

Feminism and Belly Dance: Where Now?

Feminism is a rich, complex field, a rainbow of voices with only one thing in common: a desire to make the world a
better place for women. As such, like belly dance, feminism is essentially life-affirming. For usfor any thinking being
to continue to grow and thrive, it is essential to question, to go beyond the comfortable into what stretches,
challenges and revitalizes the mind. This article has barely scratched the surface of feminist thought relevant to belly
dance. I hope it will lead other dancers into their own investigation of feminist writings. As we move into the new
millennium, feminism, with its traditions of interrogation and breaking free of societal constraints, can help guide and
deepen the processes at work in the art of belly dance.
Footnotes
1. I use the term belly dance advisedly here, though I usually describe my own dance as Middle Eastern dance
or raqs sharki. I do this for several reasons. One is to reclaim a term often intended pejoratively, much as the gay and
lesbian community has reclaimed the term queer. Belly dance seems to have originated in the Western world as a
dismissive term, showing disregard for the skill in whole body movement and musical interpretation that the dance
requires. It was also meant to exclude the dance from polite society by naming it for an area of the body associated with
base, animal, sexual desire rather than the supposedly loftier aspirations of Western dance. But the belly is also, in our
thought vocabulary, the seat of deep emotion, instinctive (gut) feelings, birth and desire. I want to reclaim these
associations and challenge the dismissive intent of the name belly dance. Furthermore, belly dance is a very
inclusive term, which is appropriate in this article. As raqs sharki and the folk dances of the Middle East have made an
impression in the West, they have inspired many stylistic departures. There are many women and men whose
interpretations of the form may not be either raqs sharki or Middle Eastern dance, who would be excluded by more
specific terms for the dance we share.
2. It is understandable for anyone, male or female, in any culture, to want to be the focus of desire for those whom s/he
desires. Our culture is particularly prone to validate women on the basis of their appearance and attractiveness to men,
so women become even more conditioned to seek this kind of attention.
3. This article is only concerned with the performance and presentation of the dance in the West. Womens experience
of the dance within Eastern culture involves a different set of issues which cannot be addressed here.
4. Belly dance offered physical freedom from the upright positions of ballet and spiritual freedom from the (already
fading) conventions of social dance, so it was a very heady experience to be seeking new, wilder movement. Of course,
belly dance has its own constraints in that any dance form requires schooling the body away from its weaknesses and
toward a stronger presentation of the dance. In the seventies, when a great many women experimented with the dance
without proceeding to any level of expertise; what was most striking to them was the freedom of the dance rather than
its discipline.
5. This process continues today for many new students, of course, but in the seventies images of sensuous dancing by
ordinary women were less commonplace and the freedoms of belly dance more striking by comparison.
6. Elsewhere I have called this a dance for women and for men who privilege the feminine. Others argue that this
dance is just as natural a form of expression for men as for women. Yet in the West there is an assumption that women
have a natural right to perform this dance, whereas men have to struggle to find an appropriate style and place. There is
no agreement within the (largely female) population of belly dancers about what that style or place should be.

7. I include this image because it is so important to so many dancers, since it embodies freedom, fire, control, wildness,
and friendly aggression in a combination particularly meaningful to Western women. It is important, though, to be
aware that our archetype is pinned on a real group. We must be aware that our image does not reflect the lives of real
Rom, and move toward redefining our reference for this archetype.
8. See the discussion of Stavros Stavrou, Erotic Fantasy or Female Empowerment? Gender Issues in Oriental Dance,
this issue, page 14.
9. I am indebted to Dr. Janet Ellerby for this example.
10. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, Oxford University Press, 1986.
11. These ideas are the subject of great debate among feminists. The question of to what extent sexual behavior within
our society can escape unequal power relationships is central to every one of us, as well as to issues such as sexual
violence and pornography. For more on this exchange, see Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive
Introduction, Westview Press 1989, 109-123.
12. Certainly male exotic dancers and male prostitutes exist in our culture, though primarily for the consumption of
other men; male power over the sexuality of less powerful men is also an established feature of patriarchal cultures.
Where women are the consumers of male eroticism (as, for example, in a Chippendales show) the dynamics of this
interaction are very different from those of a male audience for female eroticism.
13. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1952; see also Tong 196-200.
14. Tong 135.
Andrea Deagon received her Ph.D. in Classical Studies from Duke University in 1984. She is Associate Professor at
the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, where she directs the Classical Studies Program and teaches Womens
Studies. She has been involved with Middle Eastern Dance for over twenty years, as student, teacher, performer and
scholar. In addition to classwork with the foremost proponents of Middle Eastern dance in America, she has also
studied ballet, modern, African and Balinese dance. She is currently at work on a book, In the Corridors of Night: The
Mythic Meanings of Insomnia, with grant and sabbatical support from UNC-W.(email:deagona@uncw.edu)
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