The Etownian >> Opinion
Covering up: the new sexy?
Thursday December 10 2009
There are all kinds of hi¬jabs in different styles, colors and designs. Except in Saudi Arabia, women in the Mid¬dle East are not required to wear them but choose to do so as a display of modesty or faith. I think they’re on to something here.
On our last day in Am¬man, Jordan, when we were wa l k ing on the evening s t r e e t s and b a r t e r i n g , some Amer¬i c a n g i r l s decided to disregard all recom¬mendations against wear¬ing knee-length s k i r t s . I n e v e r knew the definition of eye candy until I saw single Muslim men drop what they were doing (some¬times literally) and just gawk at their s o - smo ot h - y ou - c ou ld- s e e - your-reflection-in-them legs. That district of Amman probably lost some business because in every store these girls frequented, all the men would stop working. It was embarrassing to walk with them because the married men and their wives would look at me – the only guy – as though I were some pimp and thus responsible for the females’ flippant behavior.
The iconoclastic Ameri¬can girls never caught my eyes on their legs. And since I came back, they still don’t. I was intrigued with the Muslim girls walking briskly past me, showing off nothing but their eyes and faces. It was such a foreign concept to me that it still hasn’t gotten old. You’ve never seen a furtive glance until a pair of dark eyes behind a veil shoots one your way.
They were the kind of girls that make guys feel respect toward them and great determination just to earn a cof fe e date. Their hijabs a n d s ome ¬times burkas were beauti¬fully woven and styled b u t d i d not reveal o r o u t ¬line their b o d i e s . The mo d¬esty meant a mys¬tery. All guys like a mystery, but we like to solve them even more. As a side effect, we adapt and resort to leading with our brains and charm instead of our [fill in the blank] and harm.
The reason s o many girls com¬plain of feeling like pieces of meat is because that’s how they present themselves. If they do not show respect for their bodies, what makes them think other people will? With things popping out of shirts and corset-tight jeans, what is there to talk about? Guys aren’t gifted with giving atten¬tion to two things at once, such as your body and your personality. Make it easier for us and wear suit¬able clothing, even if we’re bummed at first.
In Egypt, I witnessed an exchange between a Western feminist woman and an Arab womanist. Womanism, as coined by author Alice Walker, is essentially the reaction to feminism from black women who felt left out of the upper-middle class white woman theory and accounted for some of its negative, albeit unin¬tended, consequences, such as treating men as a higher priority.
The feminist was dis¬cussing or rather, dic¬tating ignorantly to the womanist about the hijab. The former advocated that it was a symbol of oppres¬sion, whereas the latter disagreed. It came to a point where the feminist realized her argument didn’t know its “other” and said, “You are op¬pressed; you just don’t know you are oppressed.”
She was, ironic a l ly, wearing corset-tight jeans and some showy cleavage top, to which the womanist replied, “You are degrad¬ing yourself and others, you just don’t know you are degrading.”
When I say that the modesty of hijabs is the new sexy, I am not saying that in a few years, we’ll see girls sporting hijabs along¬side their tight jeans and shirts, bumping and grind¬ing at raves to the same old songs and boys. That’s not what the prophet or¬dered. I am saying that the meaning behind the hijab might make a comeback in America, and we might see more girls slow-dancing their mystery to different songs and boys.
The Etownian >> Opinion