"Dickensian Ogling", another view

Here's how economists describe the term pent-up demand:

When demand for a product is exceptionally strong, perhaps because the demand built up during a recession when people could not afford to buy the product or because the product was temporarily not available to be sold.

Here's a more general, non-economic definition based upon the one above:

When demand for something is exceptionally strong, perhaps because the demand is built up because of repression or because the demanded something is otherwise unavailable:

And here's an example, courtesy of the New York Times, of pent-up demand in Dubai:

Temperatures have dropped from blazing hot to balmy, the turquoise waters now have a refreshing chill and the sand is just about bearable to walk on. As winter arrives in this Persian Gulf city, the masses are thronging by the tens of thousands to its white sandy beaches, wearing, in an unlikely exercise in maritime coexistence, everything from black flowing abayas to slinky bikinis. Thronging right alongside them are Dubai’s “beach pests,” the gangs of men who trudge through the sand, fully dressed, to ogle the women.

Mostly laborers at the front lines of Dubai’s building boom — toiling on manmade islands, innumerable high-rises, even a dome in the desert for the world’s largest indoor snow park — they flood the beaches every weekend to leer at women, photograph them and occasionally try to grope them in the water.

“They pretend to take pictures of their friends, but they are really taking pictures of you,” said Anika Graichen, 23, a German hotel receptionist who has lived here for three years. She lay on the beach last week trying to ignore various groups of men who passed by with their eyes locked on her. She is almost used to them now, she said. “I think I can understand it,” she said. “It’s the only place they can have a look at women.”

I don't condone how these men behave, but like Anika, I think I can understand why they do. These men live a life of extreme deprivation during the years they spend here:

Indeed, for the estimated 500,000 foreign workers here, most from the Indian subcontinent, the chance to spot a woman in a bikini may be hard to pass up. They typically live in a Dickensian world of squalor, working 12-hour shifts six days a week, often denied their wages of about $150 per month for months at a time. Most of them secure work by taking out loans from recruiting agencies at home to get here, forcing most to stay on for years without seeing their families and loved ones.

One result of this deprivation is behavior like this:

They tend to beachcomb in groups, their camera-equipped cellphones always at the ready. Many do not know how to swim; some enter the water wearing their traditional robes, made of thin white cloth that becomes transparent when wet — and reveals far more of their anatomy than most beachgoers want to see. Incidents of physical harm to women are rare, though the police have arrested flashers and men committing lewd acts in public.

I leave it to the reader's imagination to figure out the other behaviors to which all of that pent-up energy is ultimately directed. I also leave it to the read to figure what, if anything, ought to be done about both the behavior and its root causes- both social and economic.

Tags: Dubai

A final thought... I find it quite surprising that the standard-bearer of politically-correctness, the NY Times, would use the word "pests" to describe human beings.

Starling teaches at the American University of Sharjah and blogs at The Business of America is Business