A few weeks ago NPR ran this little item about a high-fashion headscarf company that has made a deal with Nordstrom to "carry [its] luxury line of hijabs." My first reaction was that it's hard to think of many things that are less important and less newsworthy than a luxury hijab; it's right down there with Nancy Pelosi's taste in ice cream or Barack Obama's sixtieth birthday party. An online search showed me quite a number of companies putting out such things, so why did NPR decide to promote this one?
The interviewer is presumably a Muslim woman herself, and she's obviously into the idea of a fashionable hijab. It seems to me that luxury and fashion are at odds with the whole idea of a hijab, which is meant to make women less conspicuous. Flaunting one's wealth and trying to draw attention (especially male attention) to one's appearance are also at odds with religious teaching about "modesty," which the interviewee cites as one of her concerns in designing her product. It's not surprising that women who wear the veil would also want to tart it up with "high-fashion, pretty" designs. Women are just as competitive as men, they love pulling rank as much as men do. If feminists are going to criticize men for such behavior, we should also criticize women for it.
Then yesterday another public radio program, The World podcast, ran a segment entitled "Turkey's New Look: Observant and Chic." It's more of the same, with the word "modest" used much more often. Is it comforting to know that standard advertising discourse can be used for any product? Maybe to some. The trouble isn't that some women are more comfortable wearing clothing, including headscarves, that cover more of their bodies than other women choose to cover. The trouble is making a principle of it, so that women who wear less covering are defined as "immodest." This is not, as apologists for the hijab like to claim, a "personal choice." (But then, I would say the same of "chic" and "fashionable," which are also intended to turn personal tastes or quirks into cultural principles.)
Besides, everybody knows that one patriarch's observant, modest woman is another's filthy, shameless harlot. It's a slippery slope: No matter how much a woman covers her body, there will be people who think she hasn't covered it enough, and when it is totally covered, they will demand that she not go out in public at all. And many observant women are collaborators with that social order, ready to condemn other women for insufficient modesty. I feel no more obligated to "respect," or withhold comment on, such principles than I do any other cultural or religious bigotry. If I condemn it in the "West," as I do, I'm certainly going to condemn it wherever it rears its head. To be clear, I'm not going to harass individual women who wear a headscarf in my line of sight; but I am going to criticize anyone of either sex or any ideology who defends "modesty," the notion that certain parts of the human body are dirty and must be covered up.
