Trust me, it’s better than the original one I had picked out….
Who am I to say what liberates a woman? I personally don’t have the right to tell a woman that what she is doing isn’t liberation. However… the following is just a sort of “liberation” that I find counterproductive.
Women in Islam can’t show skin. We’ve all seen the burqua debates that have spread like wildfire online - is it oppressive? or do they like it? is it that bad? blah blah blah? The fact is -women wear them, and some women don’t. Some men think it is sinful, wrong, shameful and disgusting when women don’t wear them.
So, a group of Islamic women had a fashion show where they skimped down to bikinis and mini skirts to show their liberation from Islam. They claimed it was a fantastic way to show that they can still be Islamic while strutting their stuff and showing off their ankles. They also appeared in some traditional Islamic clothing, just more “fashionable” then plain black clothes and less than lovely burquas.
One side of me definitely screams “good for them”. If women don’t want to dress like they live centuries ago - all the power to them. I think it is fantastic to modernize life and religion to fit the world. However - did they have to do it with a fashion show? Judges and all?
Can a beauty pageant that perpetuates sexism and stereotypes really be an effective way to display feminism and liberation to those who are told to be covered up?
I say no. Fashion shows, beauty pageants and the like objectify women. When people see the women strutting up and down the run way they don’t think “wow, she’s so liberated” or “wow, what a brain she must have”. It is putting beauty over brains.
Obviously these women have enough brains to realize that they’re being oppressed and that things aren’t equal in their religion. They know this enough to do something about it. But I personally don’t think it was an overly good way to display their feelings. It is normalizing hypers sexuality in a not overly sexual religion.
I fell weird writing about this as a westernized, obviously liberated and free woman. I can’t feel right oppressing their way of breaking from the cultural barriers that they’ve felt confined in. Just… it doesn’t seem “right”… I guess.
This all spawned from my “I Support Tarek Fatah” group that got me the boot from facebook. Some woman sent me a message telling me not to support Tarek because he didn’t support this beauty pageant (which I had never previously heard of, and still can’t find a relevant link to) and thus he must be a horrible person. The girl flipped out when I told her I didn’t support beauty pageants either… I tried to explain why to her, but she told me that I was exercising my white privilege, so I stopped messaging her.
Anyway, I just felt like writing about it, maybe someone has an opinion that will make me see what is so great about having a sexist show to fight sexism. … I just don’t get it.
