A Modern Girl's Cautionary Tale: Asmahan, Morality, and the Mass Media in Liberal Egypt

At the time of her accidental death in July, 1944, Asmahan was one of Egypt’s most popular singers and actors.  Fans were captivated by her beautiful voice, alluring beauty, and glamorous lineage; she was, for example, the child of Druze royalty from Syria.  Even more alluring for fans, however, was Asmahan’s personal life—she was the quintessential modern girl in a society struggling to reconcile its religious and cultural traditions with the emergence of new models of gendered modernity.  Situated in a period during which both the print and visual media in Egypt were rapidly expanding both in circulation and content, Asmahan’s three failed marriages, predilection for alcohol and parties, and other behavior incongruent with Egyptian norms were regular fodder for the mass media.  This paper examines the intersection of the mass media and notions of gendered modernity by examining coverage of Asmahan’s tumultuous personal life during the 1930’s and 1940’s.  She and other high profile Egyptian female entertainers of the day increasingly lived both their professional and personal lives under intense public scrutiny, and debates about moral propriety in modern Egypt were often mapped on to the bodies of female entertainers.  As the most “modern” of these entertainers, Asmahan’s life could be cast alternatively as both an exemplary or cautionary symbol of Egypt’s shifting and contested moral foundations.