On enforcing modesty...

Last time I wrote about how culture is created, its seems fitting that a news article I read
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6213854.stm made me think about the effects of the culture that surrounds us. The article is concerned with the authorities in Iran clamping down on non-Islamic dress, specifically on women who are not covering their heads enough. It seems to me that the authorities have the wrong end of the stick entirely. A police forces power to enforce behaviours has nothing on how the culture you grow up in will shape everything about you: everything from your mindset to your three piece suit. What will truly change something as personal, and as unenforceable as what you choose to wear and how you choose to wear it, (sans major human rights violations) is not the written law of land but the invisible ties of culture – like the ether of old, they permeate everything but cannot be grasped. Growing up watching every women we know covering their hair or wearing a chador is what will lead us to follow suite, not the threat of prison. Sure, some will have to stay within the law to try to survive but what use is enforcing modesty through police intervention? Oppression will not succeed where culture fails when it comes to dress codes. At best it will only help promote a kind of lip service to the kind of dress the authorities wish to promote.

How else can we explain the millions of women and men (of many faiths, nationalities and persuasions) who choose to dress in a certain way – a way in which they have been brought up to feel comfortable – no matter where they end up living? And make no mistake this remark applies equally well to the Dutch lady I know with tight pants and necklines below sea level who works in Rwanda, as it does to those who dress more modestly than most in Europe. I was neither brought in a Muslim nor in an extremely religious family but I am not comfortable in a swimsuit in public. This is not a body image issue either, I’m no cover model and I’m comfortable with my shape, I simply feel rather naked in a swimsuit. Our sense of modesty, decency and comfortability with different levels of undress or overdress is, for the most part, something we have picked up and had drummed into us (in a very subtle way) all our lives. I doubt any amount of beach bumming in Brazil will ever make me adopt a topless thong in public. Over time I may become more comfortable in my one piece in Rio, but I’m likely still to feel out of it in Europe - just as some Malaysia women I saw at my university in Ireland gradually shed their veils only to happily take them up again on returning home. There was a very interesting article in Jeune Afrique magazine a few years ago, comparing the extreme cover-up of the female form, mainly in Arabic countries, with the extreme exposure of the female form in many Western countries. There was an insightful editorial probing the question as to whether both might be indicative of oppression.

I’m not entirely sure where my sensibilities come from – sure, some of it must be attributed to growing up in a reasonably cold and very rainy place, where skimpy was a heath hazard. But many more people I know from Ireland are ok with swimsuits and plunging necklines under their raincoats. Certainly much of my dress sensibilities were picked up from my family and neighbours. And no doubt I was affected by my time travelling as solo female, when it was materially advantageous to attract as little attention as possible. This theme has continued here in Rwanda, where a conservative local dress sense couples with the fact I will stick out anywhere no matter what I wear, conspire to keep in trousers, long skirts and modest tops. On one or two occasions when I’ve strayed from this even in a small way, like a knee length skirt or a top which shows a couple of inches below my collarbone, I’ve had more stares than I care to deal with. Sometimes I find the general leering at women here, might be enough to send me reaching for my chador …if things were just a little bit different. But try to tell what I should wear, modest or not, and like any person who values their free will, I’ll react strongly against it!