Everything you wanted to know about the Saudi Abaya and were afraid to ask is here in a Washington Post article penned by a Saudi woman herself.
Ok, granted, women exercise their agency and don't just follow rules like dumb beasts, they resist patriarchy even when they don't consciously intend to, and they manipulate the Abaya to make it more individualistic. Some even rebel and wear a brown Abaya instead of a black one.
But to be honest with you, and I know some will not like this, I can't really get too overworked about all this rebellion.
Only when a Saudi woman walks down the street in Riyad without an Abaya and is neither arrested nor molested, I'd get excited about "subversive" Abaya stories. Only when the Saudi Abaya is no longer a story it becomes news worthy.
All else sounds like Abaya propaganda.
10 comments:
Hi amal, i have often heard that enforcing the abaya in saudi arabia is sexist. well i agree, BUT i never hear that the "western" dresscode is sexist as well. Here in the US, it is no offense if a guy walks down the street topless. imagine the drama if a girl does the same. so once a woman walks without without abaya in saudi and a woman walks topless in the US, will the act become news worthy.
What do u think?
I was at prom the other day, and, in boredom at the horrible music playing, I had a thought: prom is like the equal and opposite of Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, women are required to cover up and be "modest" much more so than men. At prom, the girls must wear the revealing, shoulder and boob showing dresses while the men are completely covered in their tuxedos. In either case, females are the sex objects. The difference is in the way that idea manifests itself; either they suppress it or display it.
Another high school anecdote brought to you by Arianne.
btw, just for clarification: i am for both women without abayas and topless and women with abayas and nontopless as long as it is their free choice.
Hi Haytham,
Sexist attitudes to women's dress exist in the west too. Yet, I don't think it's fair to compare the fact that women can't go topless in the street in NYC or London with Saudi women having to wear an abaya. The abaya in Saudi Arabia is part of a sex segregation system that prevents women from full and equal participation in public life. The fact that women can't go topless in streets doesn't impede their equal particiaption in public life (except in a very minimial way in the sense that men can show their nipples and women can't). Actually in some public places men can't go topless, and in certain places (beaches) women can. But your general observation about the difference is valid.
If wearing the Abaya had no consequences relating to women's access to public life and power, it wouldn't be important enough to talk about.
Like you, I'd like women to choose and not be coerced. The Abaya in Saudi Arabia is enforced by law. A special police force is given the legal and moral authority to make sure women comply. It should be up to Saudi women what kind of Abaya, if any, they want to strut around in.
I'm tired of articles like the above that skirts around the issue of personal freedom.
Arianne,
You think too much girl : )
I agree with you. One difference though is that the girls with half their boobs showing are not forced to do that by a moral police that goes around proms and arrests any girl with insignificant cleavage.
Yes, the girls are pressured by a sexist society. Still, that is different when the sexism is codified in law and practiced by state institutions (which happens in the US too but not about cleavage).
Well, of course I wasn't trying to argue that prom was morally equivalent to Saudi Arabia [despite how miserable I was at my dreadful "prom" with the world's worst DJ]. I guess my point is that the "women=sex objects" IDEA, regardless of how or to what degree it's enforced, is in all cultures, whether we like it or not.
I totally agree with you.
Congratulations, Arianne and best luck with college.
I initially did not want to respond to this post, it's past the last post!!! I think Arianne's prom example however directs attention toward the ways in which Freedom works here and coercion works there. Well, even though police would not force girls to show half their boobs in prom, I don't think any of them would dare to upset the code, which will be immediately spotted by her peers and coerced to comply. Dress codes are always coercive: Here in the west it is more frustrating for men than for women: I can't imagine going to a job talk without a tie, yet a woman can wear whatever she wants. I was tutored about the subdued look millions times here by fellow academics--what the hell is that but coercive dress-code?
True, Abbayya is coercive but we should not forget that in other countries like Tunisia it is forbidden, and so was the case at some point in Syria. Well, women have to choose either way, but once one woman chooses, most will follow. That's the Mode!!! In Tunisia some women are unhappy because they can't wear hijab to work, in Saudi Arabia it's the reverse. Analyze this! It's easy to say let people choose, but choose for whom, how and when? A liberation of women's dress has to start with a liberation of men: when men stop infusing their honor in their beards, the women of Saudi Arabia will be free enough to shed their Abayyas, wassalam!
ng
salaam
i think some ppl are forgeting the purpose of hijab which means covering. I know many people in england who cant wear the abaya freely but still choose to also they know they will suffer from others when they will go out in public. But in saudi arabia people are doing the reverse. its a sign of judgement day. the abaya is a perfect dress.Every fruit has a covering and the muslim womens covering is the abaya.just as a banana has a skin the women has a hijab to protect the goodness
attention for all womens, actually not only muslim supposively wearing an abaya or hijab. it must be also those christian ladies coz the bible says in 1 corenthian 11:5-6 that ladies not wearing veil it should be shave thier hair coz it is ashame to thier lord. meaning every ladies should have to wear abaya or hijab to portect our modesty and chastity and to be a repectable woman.
everybody should have to wear abay and hijab.
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