Last night my mom and I were watching the news when highlights of the speech Libyan leader/dictator Colonel Gaddafi gave to the UN were shown. As we watched clips of him tearing up the UN Charter, and proclaiming that Obama should be President for life, my mom told me she'd read that he has all female bodyguards, and that they all wear pearl earrings. Of course this intrigued me very much and so before going to sleep I did a bit of googling and discovered that he always travels with a troupe of 40 female bodyguards (out of a total entourage of between 200-300 people!). Apparently, they guard him 24 hours a day, are all virgins, wear lipstick, nail polish and high heels, and are trained experts in firearms and martial arts. Their fighting abilities aside, virgins, Gaddafi believes, are especially good at sensing danger. Rumours, however, exist that Gaddafi demands sexual favours from them.
So many questions: I wonder what type of relationship he has with these women? Is it strictly professional? Or more personal? Even if no sexual favours are involved, if you spend 24 hours a day with someone it seems likely that some sort of affection or emotional attachment could develop. I also wonder how long these women stay in his service? And their average age? Is there a head bodyguard? Once they stop working for him do they go on to lose their virginity and maybe have children? Or do possibly some of them choose to remain virgins even after they stop working for him?
I find all of this very fascinating because it is unique and does not have parallels (that I know of) in standard gender dynamics and politics. For most of history, women have usually uniformly been seen as the ones needing protection, not the ones doing the protecting - at least in a physical sense. So the fact that Gaddafi relies on women to protect him seems like both a novel, and an empowering thing. But then, the fact that they all have to be virgins questions how empowering it actually is. This situation shows how female sexuality is still so loaded as I highly doubt any leader - dictator or otherwise - from anywhere in the world would be able to find enough men to populate an elite male virgin bodyguard squad. Although why would they want to? Male virginity has never been (and most likely never will be) equal to female virginity. By requiring his female bodyguards to remain virgins Gaddafi seems to be keeping them in a weird no man's land - unable to have sexual choices and options. But I probably only think that because I am coming at it from a Western perspective. If women are expected to remain virgins in Libya until they get married, then I guess it makes sense Gaddafi would want them to be virgins. He probably feels that if they had husbands and/or children their first loyalties would be to their families, and not to him. And while wanting them to remain virgins, by letting them wear make-up and high heels he is, in a way, letting them express their sexuality.
My interpretation and analysis aside, all I know is that I wish one of the bodyguards would write a tell-all memoir full of juicy details... I'd be first in line to buy it.
