Banning the Burqa

In the west any time we see a country require women wear the burqa there is a collective rage that passes through the community.  How dare they oppress women in such a way?  How dare they remove her agency like she is just a thing to be dressed by them?  She should pick out her own clothes.  Then any time a Western country such as France decide to ban the wearing of the burqa or Australia considers the banning of the burqa there is a collective cheer that rises up from the same people.  They are saving women from oppression.  No longer will their male relatives be able to force them to dress as they see fit.  All they have to do to save these women is to tell them what they can and cannot wear.  

People argue that this removal of agency is necessary.  They say that even if the law allows for women to make their own choices, that they are indoctrinated from a young age, pressured by their male relatives into dressing as they see fit whether they legally have to or not.  This is the only way to save them.  Though they don’t say it this way they are saying that we have to do this because the women in question can’t be trusted to chose correctly while the society they grew up in pressures them to chose incorrectly.  Perhaps they are right.  Perhaps women cannot be trusted to buck society and do what is “best” for themselves.  If this is the case I respectfully request that we add a few more items to the list.

1 piece swimsuits and swimsuits that include a skirt.  Both of these items are left over from a bygone time when it was considered indecent for a women to show her midsection or upper legs in public.  We’ve accepted that that is the archaic past and moved on to 2 piece swimsuits as the norm, unless of course your body doesn’t fit the ideals of beauty.  If you are over a size 12 you are pressured to wear a 1 piece suite because your body is not good enough for a 2 piece suite.  We teach our young girls that thinness is the measure of beauty and if they can’t live up to it they need to cover themselves up.  If we are going to ban things that are detrimental to the women who are pressured into them by society this would be an excellent addition.  

Long skirts and high necked long sleeve blouses.  This is almost universally the uniform of Fundamentalist Evangelicals.  The women dress this way because it is unseemly, some go even so far as to say a sin, to tempt men with their bodies.  They must cover themselves so that men are not led astray of the true teaching.  While at it they must be submissive and meek.  They are taught these values from the time they are children.  They are unable to throw this way of dressing and the life that goes with it to the side without an outside force telling them they must.

Alternately we could accept that women are under constant pressure from all sides concerning what they should or should not wear.  Cover too much and you are a prude.  Fail to cover enough and you are a slut.  Of course you can’t forget that it’s all in the eye of the beholder and that some of what you wear will be one to some and the other to a different group.  We are told that if we are over a certain size we should dress in a certain way because our bodies aren’t good enough.  We are told that if what we are wearing isn’t attractive we just aren’t trying.  We are told that if what we are wearing is too attractive we are asking for it.  What we need is ways to tell girls from a young age that all those voices telling them what to wear and not wear are not the important ones.  The important ones are the ones that come from within.