In 1958 Egyptian audience laughs over proposal for women to wear head scarfs

boing
21

We were having a similar conversation about changing mores and styles with respect to this photo. It shows topless Malayali women in a temple.

Warning: This could be NSFW depending on where you are. It shows topless women.

10924727_875053015848726_7892907766994237905_n.jpg685×519 111 KB

Up until the first quarter of the 20th century, in Kerala, women often bared their breasts. This wasn’t considered shameful - quite the contrary. In traditional Indian culture, to cover your upper body before a social superior or a deity is anathema. It wasn’t all that uncommon for people - both men and women - to just go about without covering their upper bodies. To this day, if you go into the inner sanctum of many temples, you bare your chest if you’re a man. In earlier times, it was true for most of the temple complex, an audience with a king or high-ranking noble, and often for anyone of higher caste.

Over time, helped along by both Islamic and European influences, this changed, and it became more and more normal, and eventually the accepted thing, for women to cover up. The last to change was Kerala, which is why this photograph could be taken in 1915.

But how Kerala changed is what gets interesting. The orthodoxy (and there’s no orthodoxy like Kerala Brahmin orthodoxy) refused to allow women - especially lower caste women - to cover up in temples. They actually fought for the right to not expose their breasts, which traditionalists considered loose and unbecoming of womanhood.

Our modern day moral police would probably blow a few fuses if they actually understood this… As, I think, would many of the modern day protestors who are fighting for the right to do exactly what their great-great grandmothers fought for the right not to do…

Times change, and society changes with it. What is acceptable, what is anathema, what’s preferred and what’s orthodox can vary wildly. From what I’ve read, many Egyptian girls of today, influenced maybe by some weird combination of identity politics and a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood prefer the headscarf - as a religious or cultural token, as a trendy accessory, probably just as a way to fit in. And in those places where more Westernised people had banned the headscarf, they, like their Indian counterparts, fight for the right to do something their grandmothers fought for the right not to!

11 Likes
22

True, but that’s likely a function of class? It was probably less likely for working class people to be in a university, and they would more likely be the ones who wear a hijab at that time. Being so openly religious would have been looked down upon by secular elites.

That being said, finding a job is tough. I think youth unemployment is still hovering around 25%, but I can’t remember if that’s true for both genders, or just young men. You find similar numbers of upper class women going to school in most Islamic majority countries, actually. An education is considered important, even if women are still the primary caretakers of the children.

It can be, but not necessarily. When presented with images, we’re going to read our own prejudices into them, I think (you and I, as well as a conservative). But of course, pictures are never the whole story, either.

Honestly… I don’t think they think long term. Since the end of the second world war, most American (and Soviet) officials simply thought from one crisis to the next - Marshall Plan, Berlin Crisis, missiles in Turkey, various uprisings across the Eastern Bloc, space race, Angola, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. No one really thought past the consequences of dealing with each specific crisis and what certain decisions might mean long term.

The question is, how much of our foreign policy has ever been driven by these ideals?

For all his flaws and evils, Kissinger might have actually been one of the few politicians to think long term. His and Nixon’s policy on China being one example where they made an important, ground-breaking policy decision that had long term consequences, which might have been relatively positive.

2 Likes
23

Something created to be an ideological organ (as Pajamas Media was) should certainly be examined with scrutiny. Their message is not neutral and often distorted. They are not dismissed outright.

2 Likes
24

I don’t know enough about modern Egypt, its history nor its university to really comment precisely on that, but I’ve found an interesting interview with Nonie Darwish concerning these very pictures. A good read.
WikiPedia has only a cursory history of the institution and there’s a book available which seems to have a comprehensive take on it the history of Cairo University.

25

Absolutely. As I said, I don’t know enough about it to comment accurately. See my reply to @anon61221983 above concerning the interview with Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian woman who discusses the images. It would seem (according to her) that the message was accurate even if the source had a biased founding.

26

It does serve long term interests as unified and stable nations in the developing world are hard for the West to maintain hegemony over. Western funding of religious fundamentalists is perfectly in line with this, as they seriously hinder the ability of secular nationalists to resist neocolonialism.

1 Like
27

Although… Front Page Mag, so I’ll take that with a grain of salt, I’m afraid… There seems to be some interesting things in there, but much of the tone of the article is built around prejudiced notions of Islam. There has certainly been a shift to Islamitization in many middle eastern countries, but to imagine that the cold war and our actions in the region supporting the worst offenders had literally no impact is just historically inaccurate. Here is more on Darwish:

Not sure if her political stance makes her a particularly good source for sorting out the complexities of the region.

I’d suggest A Daughter of Isis by Nawal el Saadawi:

Which is an excellent autobiography of a feminist from Egypt during the period before and after the revolution and into the modern period. She fully supported Nasser’s reforms, and saw the Islamist backlash much later than the interview you posted, at least in my opinion.

The Reid book looks interesting though. I’m not familiar with his work.

2 Likes
28

Yep (sorry for the Amazon link):

1 Like
29

I’m just scratching the surface really and am no historian certainly. I’d remembered the photos from a while back and just went on a brief search to see what I could find.
A reading of the intro to Nawal El Saadawi’s book appears that she and Nonie Darwish may have a similar political stance in that they’re both feminists who’ve been struggling against religious, sexual and racial oppression around the same time period in Egypt’s history.
It would seem that you’ve read Nawal’s book, and I’d be interested to hear your take on Reid’s or Nonie’s in comparison should you get a chance to read either one, as I confess, I’m not likely to delve that deep into modern Egyptian history, not being an historian myself.

30

I ain’t afeared of bewbs. They feed babies.

The same is true of Roman women. To the Romans, breasts weren’t particularly sexual, and a woman would bare her breasts to emphasize the point that she is the nurturer and you should be listening to her.

Personally, I’d like to see those ways come back. In no way do I mean that disrespectfully.

4 Likes
31

Yeah, I just don’t want someone to run afoul of asinine corporate internet policies or something…

And if I’m not mistaken, Minoan friezes depict women with specifically bared breasts…

4 Likes
32

My thinking is that really any body part can be sexual, but doesn’t need to be. I mean, objectively we’re kind of funny looking sacks of mostly hairless meat and bones. Without the imperative of sexual reproduction, our beauty would be limited to the wonder with which we can appreciate any facet of the natural world.

Sexual attraction is purely chemical. Even though it can be triggered by social stimuli, the thing being triggered is still a response wired into us by selfish genes. So while we can be conditioned and can re-condition ourselves to be turned on by specific features of the sex(es) to which we’re attracted, the very fact that that kind of attraction exists to be condition in the first place is just instinct at work.

I would argue that, while there is objectively such a thing as sexual arousal, there’s no such thing objectively sexualized features. Which isn’t an indictment of being sexually attracted to specific features. But I do think it’s useful to remember that we have some control over when and how that response is engaged in our brain because the realization can yield some control over when and where to engage it. If more of society understood that they don’t have to be slaves to instinct, perhaps we wouldn’t have moronic social mores and hand-wringing over non-issues such as topless photos in the workplace and breastfeeding.

A society of adults could be attracted to physical features without having to stop the train every time those features came into view. It amazes me how an otherwise mature group of adults, both men and women, in a workplace or social milieu can so totally fail to cope with a nipple or cleavage or someone’s wanker. And it’s sad that we allow our social mores and our cultural customs to cater to their immature sensibilities.

1 Like
33

You’re being implicitly dualist. Social stimuli is every bit as chemical (or physical) as genes are.

2 Likes
34

Is this a joke, or are you sincerely pushing some laughable evo-psych narrative?

35

That you dislike evo psych doesn’t make it work any less. Go laugh at string theory.

2 Likes
36

Bad example IMO as there are several competing theories including M-Theory, (Brane Cosmology) and several quirkier ones to boot.

37

Enjoy your just-so stories but evo psych is barely soft science. You’re confusing it with evolutionary biology.

What is it with pseudoscientists comparing themselves to quantum theory? Sorry Deepak Chopra, you’re not giving yourself any respect with that gimmick.

3 Likes
38

You left out the letter ‘o’ and have two 'is’s.

Those words are an offensive insult and should be banned from the language.

1 Like
39

It looks to me like usable framework. Even with its warts. They are being pointed out and addressed.

Because it is easy to misinterpret it and believe own misinterpretations, when you aren’t a quantum physicist. This shit is fuzzier than a two weeks old cheesecake.

2 Likes
40

I’m a materialist. But I concede I was not clear. Attraction is programmed by genes. Attraction to particular features might have a genetic component, but it can be condition by social stimuli.

I agree. But while one can repress sexual attraction, and some individuals may not be born with it (asexuality), it’s not a product of conditioning. What one is attracted to is (this is a working hypothesis and there may indeed be some genetic or epigenetic component to which features we’re attracted to, but I think there’s ample evidence that conditioning plays as big if not a bigger role). The point I was making is that we can re-condition ourselves when and how to engage that biochemically-based instinct.

4 Likes