Growing up in a mostly conservative culture, women were almost an indicator of how "pious" a family or a neighborhood was. Questions such as: do most women cover up, how much do they cover up, and do they hang out with non-relative male companions - were subtle ideologies that were used to identify level of piety and religious practice among a community. Notice here, it was only females. Men on the other hand either perpetuated this ideology, relying on religious text, or assumed authority roles by judging, or otherwise catcalling "less-covered" women, because women were clearly asking for it. In Women And Media in the Middle East, Naomi Sakr explains that "[In the Middle East], the female has generally been invested with the task of being the moral gauge in society. The female's role thus goes beyond symbolizing the morals of the family and also become that of bearing the nation's values" (Sakr, 73). While I look back and realize how judgmental and female-objectifying these notions were, what I find most interesting is how I bought into them. I considered these questions fair and reasonable to ask, without fully comprehending what patriarchy, privilege, and sexism were.
It hasn't always been like that in some areas of the Middle East; in fact, policing of women's bodies, including determining what they should and shouldn't wear, heavily relied on the the ruling government at that time. Similar to Feminism and the Early Abortion Rights Movement, Marlene Gerber Fried, describes Redstockings, a radical feminist organization, "[that] intended to challenge a cultural and political structure that excluded [female] voices and opinions, particularly on topics that concerned women centrally," so too where independent parties rallying against the government (Fried, 21). In a rare video footage, dating back to 1958, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser responds to a request made by a Muslim Brotherhood leader to mandate the wearing of the Hijab upon all women in order to have the Muslim Brotherhood cooperate with the government. His response was both timely and direly needed to call out the nonsense of such a request:
"In the year 1953, we really wanted to compromise with the Muslim Brotherhood, if they were willing to be reasonable...I met the head of the Muslim Brotherhood and he sat with me and made his requests.
So, what did he say?
The first thing he asked for, was to make wearing a hijab mandatory in Egypt and demand that every woman walking in the street wear a Tarha (scarf).
[laughs]
Every.Walking.Women.
A man in the audience shouts: 'Let him wear it.'
[laughs]
And I told him, if I make that a law they will say that we have returned to the days of Al-Hakim bi-AmrAllah, who forbade people from walking at day and only allowed walking at night. And, my opinion is that every person in his own house decides for himself the rules.
He replied, 'No, as the leader, you are responsible.'
I told him, 'Sir, you have a daughter in Medical School, and she's not wearing a Tarha. Why didn't you make her wear a Tarha. If you are unable to make one girl--who's your daughter--wear the Tarha, you want me to put a Tarha on 10 million women?'"
Hijab will continue to become a controversial topic, for no specific reason. Covering or not covering, as a choice, is still a heated debate in this day and age. Take for example this
interview discussing the ban of the face viel, or
Niqqab, in France. Or, the aggression
this woman, who happens to be the mother of a terror victim, received for simply choosing to wear an extra article of clothing. Choices of what to do with one's body and how to present one's self should be a universal right of every woman. It should not be subject to legislation or public opinion.
When conducting research on how women's body images are presented in entertainment nowadays in the Middle East, it was interesting to find a variation of accounts. While I assumed an increase in the objectification of female figures, I found out that opposite and equally (if not more) successful music hits included more honorary terms and high status of women. For example, Saad Lamjarred's
LM3ALLEM, which had over 200 million views on YouTube, included lyrics that spoke of his beloved as "boss," and "from you we learn." While clearly a humorous music clip, it does not employ women to show their body in a derogatory and objectifying manner.
Works Cited
Sakr, Naomi. Women and Media in the Middle East: Power Through Self Expression. N.p.: I.B. Tauris, 2004. Print.
Fried, Marlene Gerber. From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement. Boston: South End, 1990. Print.
