Amy Mowafi on the Trials & Tribulations of being a Good Egyptian Girl…

This was the month I discovered I'm having a girl. And I have spent a good portion of the last few weeks thinking about the woman I'd like to see her become and the lessons I'd like to impart to her. Somewhere along the line I decided it doesn't really matter to me what type of woman she is, as much as what type of woman she is not. I never ever want her to become the type of woman who, suffocated by a screwed up society, fears herself, her desires, her ambitions, her impulses… her potential power. This was not the way I was brought up and not the way I shall bring my daughter up. And so, for now, if I could throw out some advice – a manifesto of behaviour as it were – to her future self from my vantage point of relative youth and maternal innocence, this is what I would tell her about being a "Good" Egyptian Girl… with whipped cream on top…

Read the rest of this column in the February 2012 issue or subscribe here.