Member-only story
I’ve lived in Casablanca since I was 8 years old. My dad thought it would be a wonderful idea to uproot my mother, brother, and I from our happy existence in NYC and move us thousands of kilometers away to his home country of Morocco. Thanks, dad!
The first few weeks were great. It was funny and weird to see a donkey-driven cart in the middle of traffic. I remember gazing outside in wonder the first few days in our new home. Everything was so different, in a good way. As a child, with my innocent eyes and naïve outlook, Morocco didn’t look so bad. I could live here, I thought.
Fast-forward 3 years, I was eleven. It was early September and I was starting 6th grade at the overly expensive, private American school I was enrolled in. First day of school. I’m up at 6, run to the bathroom, lo and behold, a red stain. The stain of womanhood. And that’s when everything changed. The rose-colored glasses were lifted and the reality of living in a male-dominated society hit me. Hard.
My body was developing at a fast pace. Suddenly my mother was telling me I couldn’t wear a swimsuit anymore, I was getting too curvy, too fast. The men! The men will ogle at you and we don’t want that, so cover. We don’t tell the men to stop ogling, we tell the women to cover up!
