6/07/09  Bea Karol Burks thinks Sarkozy should stop worrying about women’s bodies.

I was delighted to read Time Out’s Nina Caplan writing about the burka in this month’s New Statesman.  It’s the best and most straightforward reasoning on the issue I’ve seen yet.

Reading Caplan’s article reminded me of an incident with a retired English Literature professor from the University of Texas a few years ago.   An office-full of people were brainstorming ideas for comment in the newspaper we produced.  The professor led the discussion.  His first tirade was about the proliferation of scantily-clad models advertising soft drinks on bill boards across the city.

“How demeaning, it’s as if feminism never happened,” he raged, looking to the women in the room for support.  There was some agreement, from myself included.  But I started to get confused when the professor introduced his next idea.  He was completely unaware of the contradiction.

“The debate about the hijab in France,” he started. “These women are oppressed, they can’t even show their faces.”

Hang on a minute...  One second we’re not wearing enough, the next it’s too much... And it’s still an older man telling us how we ought to be dressing.  I was unsure as to whether he was genuinely angry at the exploitation / oppression of women or if the nakedness and hiddenness simply offended his delicately-tuned cultural sensitivities.

Regardless, the professor, like Sarkozy, clearly failed to see the contradiction in his argument.  Some women who wear tall heels are exploited, some are empowered.  Some women who wear the burka are oppressed and some are devout.  At the back of my mind I was sure this debate wasn’t really about women’s clothing but bigger cultural and ideological issues.

Women’s bodies are often the site where such wider debates take place, and it might do Sarkozy some good to remember this next time he gets angry about the burka.  This debate isn’t about clothing or even rights  but about religion, immigration and cultural norms.  Until we move this discussion away from women’s bodies and are explicit about the ideological debates implicit within it, we are only continuing the age old tradition of telling women what they should wear and how they should behave.

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