Restrictions Upon Women
Restrictions Upon Women
(Final Draft)
In the article “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem”, Fatema Mernissi talks about how Western beauty standards harm and embarrass the female population even so as the veil does the same in extremist nations, if forced by authorities. She explains how the Eastern countries do not have such a rigid standard of beauty and how men are simply not part of fashion, in contrary to the West where fashion is used by men to control what women wear. She does this by relating her experience in a western chain store in comparison to her experience in her home country of Morocco. She compares men controlling women with fashion to men controlling them with the veil, preferring the latter, since it is less dangerous and more visible. The former, she says, saps women of their power to protest for their rights, and leaves them as brainless individuals that hanker after ‘the right skirts’. Even though some of her arguments are valid, I hesitate to agree.
Firstly, no support was provided to her argument of veils hurting women, as she may have thought the argument to be obvious. Hence she misjudges her readers and fails to target the general audience. Her thesis claims that the veil “can hurt and humiliate a woman… when enforced by the state police in extremist nations such as Iran, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia.” Her choice of words here are not accurate because women in these societies are not hurt by the veil, but being oppressed by the extreme patriarchy system established in these societies. For example, Afghanis have a Pre-Islamic unwritten code called the ‘Pashtunwali’ which takes precedence over any kind of state law or Islamic law and vouchsafes family honour. It supports many abusive male attitudes to subdue their women. (F. Shirazi, p56) In Iran, literal images are being used for propaganda of the ideal Iranian woman, and that image is being forced on the women there, forcing all of them to conform to that ‘ideal’ woman. (F.Shirazi,
(Final Draft)
In the article “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem”, Fatema Mernissi talks about how Western beauty standards harm and embarrass the female population even so as the veil does the same in extremist nations, if forced by authorities. She explains how the Eastern countries do not have such a rigid standard of beauty and how men are simply not part of fashion, in contrary to the West where fashion is used by men to control what women wear. She does this by relating her experience in a western chain store in comparison to her experience in her home country of Morocco. She compares men controlling women with fashion to men controlling them with the veil, preferring the latter, since it is less dangerous and more visible. The former, she says, saps women of their power to protest for their rights, and leaves them as brainless individuals that hanker after ‘the right skirts’. Even though some of her arguments are valid, I hesitate to agree.
Firstly, no support was provided to her argument of veils hurting women, as she may have thought the argument to be obvious. Hence she misjudges her readers and fails to target the general audience. Her thesis claims that the veil “can hurt and humiliate a woman… when enforced by the state police in extremist nations such as Iran, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia.” Her choice of words here are not accurate because women in these societies are not hurt by the veil, but being oppressed by the extreme patriarchy system established in these societies. For example, Afghanis have a Pre-Islamic unwritten code called the ‘Pashtunwali’ which takes precedence over any kind of state law or Islamic law and vouchsafes family honour. It supports many abusive male attitudes to subdue their women. (F. Shirazi, p56) In Iran, literal images are being used for propaganda of the ideal Iranian woman, and that image is being forced on the women there, forcing all of them to conform to that ‘ideal’ woman. (F.Shirazi,