tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post5859463802804576650..comments2022-11-11T13:51:58.624+00:00Comments on Feminazery: Exotification and infantilisation – even though the sound of it is something quite atrociousmorningtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01189531902050114158noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-50092722900487242382010-04-07T21:04:25.742+01:002010-04-07T21:04:25.742+01:00I loved this article, totally agree. And, as a whi...I loved this article, totally agree. And, as a white woman who also does not like flaunting my flesh (never have), I occasionally use a long scarf to wrap round my head and neck in hijab-style because it is warm and makes me feel quite secure, actually. <br /><br />And I notice the looks I get when I do this. It's freezing cold, there is wind blowing all over the place that is chapping my face, hurting my ears, and the rain is just starting. So why are you looking at me as if I am strange? And why do you shift over on the pavement a little bit more as you pass me? And stare then quickly look away? I honestly have had that reaction. Or they completely ignore you (guys and young women are the worst for this). THEN I feel great because I am not getting stared at or judged. I'm just walking along minding my own business. <br /><br />Don't get me wrong, I wear pretty much what I want to and am in no way bothered by fashion, I constantly get bitchy looks from my female colleagues who think maybe I'm not making enough of an effort or whatever, and I really don't care. I'm comfortable, I'm clean, I wear what the fuck I want. I just thought it was interesting the way I notice people relating to me if I wrap a scarf around my head.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09401378687391072248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-89725658164937931022010-03-13T18:19:22.557+00:002010-03-13T18:19:22.557+00:00@ Sayem: As you say, we need to focus on actual op...@ Sayem: As you say, we need to focus on actual oppression rather than women's hairdos! Because that's what it boils down to at the end of the day. And even if it *is* a symptom of an oppressive, patriarchal ideology, you have to treat the disease, not the symptoms.<br /><br />@Marina: The Hilary Mantel article? I've totally missed it and, unfortunately, your link is back to the Marie Claire one! I assume this is some horrible trick to make me read more on how my lipstick shade could change my career destiny. Thanks for that ;)<br /><br />@Claire: Re the hijab/thong thing (try saying that in a hurry), it's something that gets my Indian friend riled up from an Islamic perspective. The reasoning behind it, in my opinion, is - as you say - an increasing politicisation of the hijab. Girls are wanting to wear it to show allegience rather than modesty, hence the lack of conformity in the rest of their outfits.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-83788228336919142272010-03-09T12:58:14.984+00:002010-03-09T12:58:14.984+00:00There are more important things to get riled about...There are more important things to get riled about as Sayem says. And the more we (as a society) get worked up about Muslim women wearing headscarves/hijabs/burkhas, the more some are going to want to do it! It's an identity thing, and as such, has nothing to do with us who are not Muslim. Interestingly, I've seen be-hijabbed young girls, all properly head-covered and all, with either g-string or cleavage on display, which is interesting. <br />Ah, yes, the Hilary Mantel article. Strange. It read like a April fool's piece. I read it because it seemed just so unlikely and I was waiting for a punchline which never came.NLondonmemehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06389807941767090557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-86488573139193357202010-03-08T12:30:39.579+00:002010-03-08T12:30:39.579+00:00@LHearts: That article totally made me LOL. I was ...@LHearts: That article totally made me LOL. I was so baffled by the "different" "looks", because they all looked <i>exactly the same</i> to me - the varioations in amount/style of makeup were so minute it was obviously only the initiated (or maybe indoctrinated?) who would even notice them. Just goes to undescore how arbitrary and in some cases non-existent these demarcators of female acceptability are.<br /><br />If you want to get riled up on the topic of makeup though - and I realise you might not, feminists have enough to be angry about! =) - try <a href="http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/features/real-life/article/-/5886737/how-does-your-make-up-affect-your-career/" rel="nofollow">this excrecable Hilary Mantel piece in the Guardian</a>. It really made me want to hit somebody. Preferably Hilary Mantel.Marina Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14449789093721258516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-17733385559096322922010-03-05T20:08:08.573+00:002010-03-05T20:08:08.573+00:00As an Asian male, I can't say anything about t...As an Asian male, I can't say anything about the veil - it's a woman's choice at the end of the day whether she wears it or not. The point is to ensure she's in a position to make that choice and not be forced one way or the other.<br />If we really want to help Asian women, we ought to do something about the more deep-seated problems, like forced marriages, the fact that women are still regarded as less valuable than men and the attitudes reinforcing this, and all such other problems. All this fuss over a strip of cloth around someone's head is misguided, to say the least, when there are worse things to deal with.The Road Warriorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12950444862893161265noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-57116872808927461282010-03-05T14:24:04.970+00:002010-03-05T14:24:04.970+00:00Thank you so much for all the positive and really ...Thank you so much for all the positive and really engaging responses!<br /><br />@ Alex: I'm not actually sure if there's a difference - Google seems to think not, and comes up with relatively similar numbers of results (17k vs 23k for exotification/exoticisation). My OED - now I look - only contains 'exoticism', so I'd say you're more likely to be correct and that 'exotification' is just a popularly used mistake!<br /><br />@Marina S: You make your points far more eloquently than I do! I strongly agree about Hijab not being the remedy for misogyny that both Western and modern British Muslims (in my experience) believe or hope it to be, and that NYT article seems to go a long way to underlining that. <br /><br />Style of clothing for women seems to be a red herring. It really is just another means of control, another mythical (and completely nebulous) set of rules from which women will always manage to 'trangress'.<br /><br />I have noticed, as you point out, disgust being displayed when non-Asian women wear shalwar kameez or similar, and when Muslim women wear western clothes - even the popular dress/cardigan/skinny jeans combo. There seems to be a lot of underlying anxiety and guilt based around women's aesthetic choices - the moralistic tone and reproving attitudes in this horror article are a good example (totally off-topic, but it got me riled this morning!):<br /><br />http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/features/real-life/article/-/5886737/how-does-your-make-up-affect-your-career/<br /><br />@ Jilly: it really is frustrating, isn't it? I think, perhaps, some of the whole 'oppression' debate (particularly from women) does stem from a misguided attempt to liberate women whose choices we don't necessarily understand. I have to catch myself time and again when I think about how little attraction being a housewife has. The point is, it has no attraction *for me*.<br /><br />To view ourselves ("uncovered" women) as somehow outside or above a dominant ideology is incredibly naive. Our ideology may not be as explicit as a religion, but it's there, influencing what we wear and how we behave.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-90465008324889043332010-03-05T12:22:25.055+00:002010-03-05T12:22:25.055+00:00I thought this piece was brilliant. I spend my li...I thought this piece was brilliant. I spend my life saying that many Muslim women choose to wear the Hijab or even the Burka (I'm white by the way) - but everyone - even the most enlightened think they all cover up because they're made to.<br /><br />I hate seeing near naked women used to sell anything and everything as well. Women are people not just bodies.Jillyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00104126307586066155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-88155210278172484782010-03-05T11:47:29.502+00:002010-03-05T11:47:29.502+00:00Just to add an extra layer of complexity to your e...Just to add an extra layer of complexity to your excellent piece, it's worth pointing out that within the context of a Muslim society, covering up is not the protective panacea for misogyny that it is sometimes portrayed as being by a sympathetic Western commentariat. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24iht-letterweb.html" rel="nofollow">I am reminded of this piece</a> about how the increasing adoption of hijab in Cairo has tracked closely with a rise in groping and harrassement, reaching something like epidemic proportions (83% of Egyptian women, most veiled, report having experienced some form of sexual harrassement).<br /><br />This strongly reinforces my belief that the covering or uncovering of flesh do not, in themselves, carry any inherent meaning. There is nothing "liberating" in either the hijab or the bikini. Both are simply different modes of controlling women's bodies and making a political landscape out of them. Despite the visible differences, the Catch-22 for the English and Egyptian woman is really the same: you do what society tells you it wants you to do (wear a miniskirt or a veil) and are punished for it (with harrassement, in both cases). The backlash against feminism strongly underlies and chronologically overlaps with the rise both in te cult of modesty and the cult of hyper-sexualised raunch culture.<br /><br />So when your Muslim friend covers up int he UK, she is not only subverting people's racist expectations of her as a passive locus for their sexual objectification; she is more directly rebelling against the backlash culture's proscription of women as creatures of sexual display, existing only for the pleasure of their male spectators. <br /><br />(You can test this hypothesis by looking at the reaction that non-Asian women wearing hijab/jalaba get on the street - the hostility is really palpable, because the sense of "betrayal", of transgression, is that much greater from a woman who is supposed not only to be completely bought in to the whole raunch culture gig, but is presumed to somehow be benefiting from it or "empowered" by it)Marina Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14449789093721258516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-71871530393731763052010-03-05T10:25:06.029+00:002010-03-05T10:25:06.029+00:00Really good article. Just wondered though, I alway...Really good article. Just wondered though, I always thought it was 'exoticisation'? Is there a difference?Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08288284218700038061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-88018195065753833812010-03-05T09:29:04.946+00:002010-03-05T09:29:04.946+00:00[I really should learn how to use that edit functi...[I really should learn how to use that edit function!]<br /><br />@ Overocea: Thank you for your comment - it means a lot.<br /><br />I wasn't even sure what I wanted to say when I started out on this piece - I just knew that something had been niggling.<br /><br />In the wake of 'Bride and Prejudice', 'Slum Dog Millionaire' and other more Westernised Bollywood(-esque) movies, Indian women have popped up on the radar as being 'fanciable'. They're starting to be perceived in the same way that Far Eastern women have been labelled for years.<br /><br />We've had all those FHM-type shots of Freda Pinto and men are starting to see the 'potential' in Indian - as well as Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan - women too.<br /><br />Women who cover up are an inconvenience. They don't fit under the blanket heading of 'exotic, decorative and submissive' that Western men are trying to throw on Asian women, and that seems to be where the aggression comes in.<br /><br />If it's depressing for me, I can't imagine how women of colour feel, but if this article goes a millimetre towards expressing a bit of solidarity and affirmation, then it's done its job!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-63138365329203845432010-03-05T09:21:34.202+00:002010-03-05T09:21:34.202+00:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7856627602404206262.post-32075109471086004032010-03-05T00:27:05.505+00:002010-03-05T00:27:05.505+00:00I've been reading this blog for a while but ha...I've been reading this blog for a while but have never commented before. I had to on this article to say - an absolutely wonderful piece; thank you.overoceahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07931025804189737070noreply@blogger.com