Tuesday, December 9, 2008

"She's not dressed like an American"

A friend of mine sent me this in response to my earlier post. It's a video of a series that John Quinones of ABC news did called "What Would You Do". In it, an actress in a headscarf is refused service at a bakery. The clerk, also an actor, tells her to leave because she is "not an American", and talks about how he doesn't know whether she is a terrorist or not. Some people agree with the clerk, and some tell the clerk he's out of line. Most customers say nothing. 

Why is hijab, the head scarf, so evocative? 

One of the customers who spoke out against the clerk's discriminatory behavior was a young Muslim woman who did not wear the scarf. When she demanded to know if the clerk was refusing to serve the actress based on her manner of dress, he said yes, that the actress was not dressed like an American, and did not share his culture. The customer defended the actress: "I am an American. She is my culture!" and the clerk replied, "You are dressed like an American." 

Do complaints about the way Muslim women dress that are similar to the clerk's exist simply because a headscarf is different than what American women usually wear? Is that complaint rooted in anger that a person would choose to separate him/herself from American culture by dressing in an obviously exceptional way? Is it rooted in fear that a woman who would dress that way is different and therefore dangerous, or associated with Islam and therefore dangerous? 

It is especially ironic that another young woman quoted in this video, who wears the scarf, feels that it makes her a target for harassment or violence. In many countries, the conventional wisdom is that a scarf is the mark of a modest woman, who will be defended when  harassed on the street. In 2005, "immodest" women were attacked with acid on the streets in Iraq. However, in the US, this woman's scarf, exercise of her first amendment right to free expression, makes her fearful of going out in public alone. This is frustrating to me: don't Americans think of themselves as more evolved than Middle Easterners partially because American women do not wear veils and can move in public freely?  Isn't part of the clerk's anger based on his unwillingness to be complicit in what he feels is an illegitimate and inferior culture? And isn't that culture inferior partially because women are marginalized in the popular Western conception of Islam? Indeed, the Bush Administration justified the invasion of Iraq partially on women's rights issues. So, marginalizing women because they wear the scarf in America is a truly backward way to defend the popular American position and the American, rights-based way of life. 

This paradox that a veiled woman is more subject to harassment than a woman dressed "as an American" reveals an unexamined, reactionary response to the veil, as well as a deep misunderstanding of American culture at its ugliest. American society is one in which women can expect a certain level of harassment. Harassment is the price a woman must pay for participating in the public sphere. The burden of that public harassment cannot be avoided, no matter what a woman does. If she dresses in a revealing way, she is harassed. If she is thin and pretty, she is harassed. If she is disabled or old and walks slowly, she is harassed. If she is fat, she is harassed. If she is very modest and covers her hair and her body's shape, she is harassed. This phenomenon is the consistent, throbbing cultural reminder to each woman that her participation is exceptional, conditioned upon her not making trouble, and revokable by men when she ceases to please. It reminds a woman that she is vulnerable. She can be silenced or raped when she "deserves it". In America we do not phrase this pernicious form of sexism as a pervasive cultural problem. Instead, we marvel at stories from Egypt and lament their problem with street harassment. Harassing a veiled woman is an embodiment of all these problems at once. Harassment denies an American woman her first amendment right to express herself in her dress and the practice of her religion; it forces her to either stay inside or bring a protector with her when she tries to participate publicly; it assesses her worth aesthetically, and because her scarf is visually offensive (or at least not titillating), she is worth nothing;  it reduces her to her visual association with the "other" and the "enemy". Harassing a veiled woman highlights all that Americans have in common with cultures that employ silence, pain, and death to keep their women in line. Which sucks, since that is presumably one of the reasons Americans don't like the veil in the first place. 


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