National Socks and the “Nylon Woman”: Materiality, Gender, and Nationalism in Textile Marketing in Semicolonial Egypt, 1930–56

Abstract

The specific ways that cloth-"foreign silks," "durable Egyptian cottons," and "artificial silks"emerged as a potent and visible symbol through which to contest the relations of colonialism and establish national community in Egypt varied with the changing realities of Egypt's political economy. The country's early importation of textiles despite its cultivation of raw cotton, the growth of its state-protected local mechanized industry working long-and medium-staple cotton for a largely lower-class market, and that industry's diversification into artificial silk technologies all helped structure a shift from "foreign silks" to "the nylon woman" as tropes in popular and political discourse defining the limits of the national community and the behaviors suitable for it. Although artificial fibers considerably lowered the cost of hosiery and other goods, thereby expanding consumption, the use of synthetics like nylon rather than cotton subverted the goal of national economic unity between agriculture and industry.Egypt had a long history of artisanal textile spinning, weaving, and dyeing, and the sector remained strong into the early 20th century by furnishing part of the ever-growing population's local market demand. Nevertheless, the dynamics of the cotton economy contributed to the country's political and economic subordination to Britain. 1 Often called the "cotton paradox," Egypt's status as a cotton grower dependent on imports of coarse raw cotton and cotton textiles resulted from the high value of its own long-staple raw cotton on the export market. 2 At the time Egypt achieved formal independence in the early 1920s, Britain bought nearly 45 percent of Egypt's exports of raw cotton and supplied almost 90 percent of the 201 million square meters of cotton textiles imported annually into the country. 3 Much of this imported fabric was cheap cloth, mass produced with coarse cotton yarns and destined for peasant consumption, although Great Britain also exported a range of sturdier and more elegant fabrics for sale to the smaller middle and upper classes. Most Egyptian textile artisans and local factories worked short-and medium-staple raw cotton and thread, mainly imported from India and the United States, until an Egyptian law in 1916 prohibited the importation of raw cotton to prevent the spread of cotton pests. 4 Nancy Y. Reynolds is an Assistant Professor in the

Miniskirts and “Beatniks”: Gender Roles, National Development, and Morals in 1960s Tunisia

“…Marketing to a readership with disposable income, advertisements helped "define the boundaries of national community," encouraging readers to recognize sartorial and consumer signs of a bourgeois modernity from well-coiffed women in pleated skirts to electric fans and vacuum cleaners. 53 For instance, ads for fresh fish and Byrsa tomato paste depicted smiling women with trendy hairstyles, short-sleeved dresses, and clean aprons serving guests or feeding their families. Another ad featured a manicured and seductive woman wearing pearl earrings and a draping blouse enticing readers to smoke El Khadra cigarettes (Figure 1).…”