A while back, I was out shopping for underwear. As I deliberated over my usual modest choices, five women in burqas came into the store. Chatting and laughing, they headed over to a selection of lacy g-strings, holding up the garments for all to see as they checked sizes and made loud comments about each pair of panties.
Years before, I had tried on a burqa in an Afghani rug shop. I had been shocked at how it had obscured my vision, and at how heavily it hung. But when I heard these joyful, sexy, belly-laughing women, invisible behind their veils, it occurred to me that there may be levels of choice and layers of meaning behind the concept of modesty and how it is expressed.
Extroverted women in burqas shopping for fancy lingerie may not be the oppressed victims often portrayed in the media; more to the point, women in burqas in Australia may not embody the same meaning as women in burqas in Afghanistan or anywhere else that forces women to wear it by law.
Then again, perhaps they too are oppressed. But if we are to discuss the burqa in Australia, as we have since the recent decision by a Perth judge that a witness cannot wear a burqa in court, then let's have a proper conversation. Let's avoid inflammatory language and gross generalisations; and let's be honest, too, about the masks we 'liberated' women wear.
Regarding my own masks, I am considered low maintenance. I get my hair cropped short four or five times a year. I wax only when the weather warms up. But I don't get my hair cut by just anyone; I have it carefully trimmed in a salon. I don't wax at home, but shell out to have some other woman smear hot wax on my legs and rip it, and the hairs, off.
I'm getting flak as my sides go salty — most of my friends dye their hair. I don't wear make-up, but many women won't leave the house without lipstick and a swipe of eyeliner. Many wax their bikini lines or more. And I can't tell you the number of times people have suggested I have my eyebrows shaped — they aren't heavy, but one is slightly crooked.
A shockingly high number of women I know have had plastic surgery of one kind or another — ears pinned, breasts reduced, breasts inflated, tummies tucked, forehead lines filled in.
Women will say that they do these things according to their own choice. And they are right; no one is threatening to stone them if they leave the house without a touch of lippy.
And yet when I ask friends why they wax, the most common response is 'I feel dirty'; they wear make-up because otherwise they 'look like death'. Ironically, it is often mothers and sisters who are the worst offenders when it comes to pressuring a woman to shave her legs, lose some weight, and look attractive; in other words, to submit to the male gaze.
In this enlightened society of ours, I have been 'flashed' half a dozen times; the first time, I was eight. Years later, out for an evening stroll with my father, money was thrown at me from a moving car as the occupants hollered 'slut!'. I can still feel the sting of coins hitting my cheek.
In this same liberated society, many women use cosmetics and clothing to conceal bruising; the majority of sexual assaults are against children under the age of 14; I can't leaf through a newspaper without seeing airbrushed bodies and lingerie ads; a major department store sells 'bras' for three-year-olds; and younger and younger women are refusing to eat in their attempts to be desirably thin.
So much of a woman's experience tells her that without a certain level of grooming she is grotty and, worse, unattractive. So much suggests that she is being watched by predatory eyes. No wonder we all wear masks.
I am by no means comfortable with the burqa, but I can understand the desire to wear a veil in one form or another. Any public conversation about the decision to wear a burqa — and in Australia it is often a decision — must be respectful. It must hear from women who wear the garment if it is to be any more than paternalism.
And any critique would be far more credible if we also talked about the ways Western women protectively mask themselves, with cosmetics and hair dye and fashionable clothes, and why they do so. I am not particularly familiar with the teachings of the Prophet, but as another famous prophet once said, 'If you want to remove the splinter from another's eye, first remove the plank from your own.'
Or perhaps just take off the mascara.
Alison Sampson is the mother of three girls. She
studied theology at Whitley College, is a regular contributor to Zadok,
and blogs at www.theideaofhome.blogspot.com.