They aren’t a symbol at all, they are kinds of clothing. People can and do have differing opinions about what they represent to them. Seeing the normal clothing of another culture as being primarily a symbol seems very stereotypical and indoctrinary to me. Doing so I think depersonalizes and disindividuates in precisely the way people are saying they are trying to avoid.
Any way you slice it, it still amounts to promoting a value judgement that they are distinct from your professed culture, and that your culture is somehow superior.
Way I figure it is that as a fat, pasty-white dude, it ain’t my place to tell anyone what to wear. Not even other fat pasty-white dudes. This goes double for each level of difference from me.
It’s just not my call to tell anyone what to wear, anywhere. I mean, tracky-daks are formal wear for me.
Now I get the whole “being culturally oppressed to wear this” argument. And in my perfect world, no-one needs to wear anything they don’t want to. So if they’re making a choice, that’s their choice. Agency, or something.
If they’re not making a choice, telling them how bad their cultural values are isn’t going to help, particularly when that group is copping way more shit than they need right now. About the only way I can see to get to my perfect world, is just to treat people with kindness and respect where I can, so that they’ll get to a place where they feel able make a choice. I ain’t gonna assume someone’s oppressed from what clothing they wear.
Dunno about the dollar store thing. Maybe the clerk’s a bigot. Maybe they are just shit-scared of ninjas and got triggered by the sight of a niqab. I’m going for the first one, what with the climate and all.
OK, fair enough. Let’s give this another go, then, because I want to drive a point home.
Let’s say you have a beloved family member, and she’s a lovely, young woman, full of life, intelligent, seems set to have a promising STEM career.
Then, some time in her sophomore year of undergrad, she quits and marries a guy she’s been dating. She moves to Tempe, AZ, and they join the Faithful Word Baptist Church.
From what I’m gathering from this thread, as long as she’s making the decision to join the church of her own free will, all anyone should do is shut up and support her decision.
Fucking really?
I don’t think I even originally advocated that women shouldn’t be modest, just that there’s no particular religious reason they have to wear a particular piece of gear, and that it seems to draw quite a bit of attention. Now, of course, the people who throw a fit are assholes, no doubt, just…I don’t know anymore, whatever, guys, let’s all become Amish. As long as you willingly choose your shackles, you’re still free.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this model posed for this image, knowing full well this would be the use of the image. She’s okay with the notion that there are people out there who will ogle her body, and will fantasize about what they’d do if they could get between her legs, and she’s okay with that.
Is that okay? Is it then also okay for me to ogle the image?
If it was my niece, or daughter, I’d talk to her. Ask her to be honest about why she’s making the choice she’s making. Offer my honest opinion, but yeah… if it’s really the life she wants, if she’s finding happiness and meaning in it, then I respect her decision. There are no guarantees in life–even taking the “smart” path could potentially end in sadness.
The important part is the communication, and that’s not something that can be decided or well served by a committee of strangers on the internet. It’s never so simple as a hypothetical case.
Dragging her away against her will? She’d just run back at the first opportunity, and resent you for it. Plus, you’d get arrested for kidnapping.
Sending her pamphlets to tell her that her Church is bad? That would only convince her that you’re the enemy.
Tell her how disappointed you are in her choice of career and partner? If she ran off like that, chances are she was following a path, not because it was making her happy, but because she thought it would make you happy, and got tired of living in the shadow of your expectations. She knows you’re disappointed, telling her so will just confirm it was the right decision, and that you care more about the person you wanted her to be than the person she is.
If it was my daughter, I’d make sure I didn’t alienate her, make sure that she knows that my first priority is her happiness, and that she’s always welcome to come home, with no fear of judgement, if she ever changed her mind. Plus, a standing offer of violence upon her husband if he ever abuses her.
You can never change any mind except for your own. All you can do is show acceptance to those whose minds are different than yours, and show tolerance and respect. If you set a good example, maybe someone will emulate it. But trying to force anyone to change their mind about something is probably just going to backfire and make them trust you less.
Yes and Yes…
Mind you I find American Apparel ads kinda skeevy personally but that is me and it isn’t like I am their target market anyway. If the model is happy with it all then whatevers it is just not that big a deal. Seriously. You know what my niece does bellydance and burlesque and has been on stage wearing less and I am totally cool with it. Heck I was happy to see her perform last summer when she was in town for a week long workshop/gathering thingy.
Why wouldn’t it be? The alternative is a moral framework where a woman can’t go to the beach because she knows she’ll be ogled. Can’t go to the gym. Can’t go for a jog.
I’m not saying, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” because that says that I’m entitled to ogle any attractive women out there. What I’m saying is, “If you want to flaunt it, it isn’t my place to tell you that you shouldn’t.”
As for the morality of ogling… It’s hard to tell from an image how much of a power imbalance was involved in getting that picture taken.
I think that if a woman doesn’t want pictures disseminated for guys to ogle over, she shouldn’t be coerced into doing so, and from what I’ve heard about the assault entertainment industry, too often the men in power use the power imbalance to coerce the women into doing things they’d rather not (which is awful, and which should stop). If there are assurances that the picture was taken and distributed with full, enthusiastic consent, and thus that the woman doesn’t mind being ogled, then the only person being harmed here is, possibly, yourself.
At that point it comes down to your own morality: will it harm you (e.g., imprint a pattern of objectification on your brain)? Is harming yourself immoral? Those are questions I can’t answer for you.
Also, I don’t get your logic. If a woman chooses to wear clothing so that she doesn’t get ogled, she’s disempowered. If a woman chooses to wear (or rather, not wear) clothing so that she does get ogled, she’s disempowered.
Just what kind of clothing choices would you accept as “empowering?”
Maybe her decision to marry that guy and join that church says everything you need to know because it symbolizes something specific to you. But without digging into the details I would not enough background information to know the significance of this decision. Do most people at this church share the views of the pastor you linked to? Does the pastor’s opinion have more weight than that of the others? You might be assuming a power imbalance here. Maybe she intends to join the church and defy it with her STEM career anyway - which I would commend as being a gutsy move which might teach them something. Simply having some affiliation with a group does not adequately explain a person’s values or goals.
I am neither Christian nor Muslim, but I can acknowledge that despite me having some reservations about those models applicability to life as I see it, not everybody who subscribes to those religions is an unthinking fundamentalist, or even a participant in patriarchy.
What sounds imposing about your position here (to what extent I might understand it) is that you seem to frame it in terms of whether or not we should find such a situation acceptable. It is not my place to accept or spurn the personal life decisions of others. But what I certainly do is communicate and critique. I try to question everything, and encourage those around me to question also. I can disagree with people and still have enough respect to acknowledge their agency.
Also, I think that if this situation is some sort of analogy for the experience of the women the article about, it fails. There is no equivalence of a person completely changing their way of life, as you outline. This is simply a person who chooses to go about life as they have done.
Aren’t you contradicting yourself here? If there is no religious reason for wearing it, then where is the ideological static coming from? The big problem I was told was that Muslim countries are oppressive to women. So when a non-Muslim person wears a niqab out of choice, what does that culture’s values have to do with anything? I think that the broadcast media are deliberately framing this as a religious issue because it’s a political wedge which polarizes people.
Very few articles of clothes strike me as being actually intrinsically religious. I think that people would still be pressured to dress “normally” (whatever that may be) if they were dressed like traditional Japanese merchants, Estonian farmers, Aka hunters, or anybody else. But I am especially suspicious when they get grief for association with a group the US keeps pushing an agenda against.
I am always still surprised when people move to US and adopt European styles of language and clothing.
The poor misguided women are so confused by western cultural judgements that they confound their burqas/hijab/niqab for a symbol of oppression instead of some stylish piece of clothing.
So? What is your point? If many people dislike those clothes, is it problematic for others to wear them? With ANY compulsive behavior or activity - gambling, sex, ice cream, drugs, wearing clothes - it is not the activity which is harmful, but rather it is the compulsion itself which is harmful. Choosing to not wear one is fine, being forced to not wear one is confrontational, imposing, and an exercise in entitlement.
Perhaps it is unfortunate if people feel compelled to wear them in Syria or Iran, but there isn’t anybody being compelled to wear them in Indiana, which is where this article is referring to. The shopkeeper in question here appears to have no direct personal experience with this oppression, so I am not clear on how she is entitled to liberate people from their personal choices in clothing. Like I said before, if this woman was really the victim here, then by forcing her to live differently people are effective blaming the victim, which is not cool. And if she does not feel victimized, then insisting that she is a victim anyway is even more difficult to justify.
So far as I am concerned, if people in the US prefer they can go completely nude, covered head to foot, or anything in between because it is their personal decision and does not directly involve anyone else. Providing of course that it is sanitary!
But people in other countries and cultures have no obligation to live the way you or I might ideally prefer them to. A dialog between those groups is helpful, but nobody is in a position to make decisions for anyone else.
