A place of greater safety
Oh for god’s sake.
this is Scotland’s first ‘halal hairdressers’ – a beauty salon which conforms to the strict rules of Islam; a place where Muslim women who wear the veil or headscarf can be seen uncovered without the risk of the gaze of men.
…
The salon will be a ‘man-free zone’. The frosted windows will stop any inquisitive men passing by from gawping at the clients. No-one can get in without passing through a secure buzzer entry system with CCTV. All this means that the Muslim ladies who have come for a new hair-do can remove their headscarves safe in the knowledge that only other women can see them.
Was this article written by an imam? Probably not, since the name is Helen McArdle. What is she doing buying into the ugly, infantile assumptions behind this stupid enterprise? The “gaze of men” is not really much of a “risk,” especially since pretty much no men in the universe want to look through the windows of a hairdresser’s to watch women getting their hair worked on. “Inquisitive” men won’t be “gawping” at the clients anyway, because they don’t give a fuck. And all this fuss and precaution just feeds into the idea that women need to be hidden away at all times and aren’t “safe” taking their headscarves off unless only other women can see them.
“There are hair salons in Glasgow that are ladies-only, but not like our salon. Our salon is completely discreet, completely hidden from the public, from men, whereas the salons here, men still walk past and they can still see in or come in. Ours has a buzzer entry system, and we’ve got CCTV so that we can see who’s actually approaching the door.
…
“Muslim husbands can feel relaxed knowing that their wife is safe, where no man is going to be able to see them, and then they can come home and show their beauty. Muslim clients have never experienced this ever. It’s a great feeling.”
Ugh.
Fixed it for you Ms. McArdle.
What’s next ? Private medical clinics where Muslim parents can send their daughters to get sexually mutilated? Very discreet I’m sure. What a “great feeling” that will be.
Hmmm…Buzzer & CCTV entry control…is it REALLY a hair salon…or a BOMB FACTORY?
Or…do they have naked dancing boys…
…or alcoholic beverages…
…or bacon!?!
Hmm, lost the strikethru on wife.
I suppose now they’ll need a similar solution for niqabis who go to the length of wearing gloves. “Our manicure shop has frosted glass windows and CCTV, so husbands can feel safe that no other men can see their wives’ fingernails. They can show their beautiful cherry red gloss with sparkly butterfly motif designs at home.”
How can any woman write this kind of crap without feeling nauseated to her core at the blithe, it’s-so-normal statement, ““Muslim husbands can feel relaxed knowing that their wife is safe, where no man is going to be able to see them”?
But O, your headline on News about getting one’s hair dressed only to plaster it in bandages is priceless. Snort.
Disgusting beyond endurance.
Another case of ‘tolerance’ or ‘resepect’ madness, this time with Elizabeth Moon:
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-you-cant-say-about-islam-backlash.html
We need to label these criticism stoppers with something memetic. Perhaps ‘anti-liberals’ or ‘fascists’ (the term surely is now ready to come back in fashion!) or some such label to plug the continued madness.
Frankly, I’d be surprised if many people could read this without laughing; it is so ludicrous I’m still not quite sure if the journalist doesn’t have her tongue half in her cheek.
“The male gaze” was big in Theory a while back. This slots right in to those discourses and turns them from critique of patriarchy into support for it. Without anyone having to change what they say (just an inversion of the political content of what they are saying).
Ever so slightly off-topic …
Ex-Muslim Eve Ahmed answers your questions in today’s Daily Mail article entitled “Why ARE so many modern British career women converting to Islam?”
Reaction to a ‘bad hair’ day? Groan.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1324039/Like-Lauren-Booth-ARE-modern-British-career-women-converting-Islam.html
Totally anecdotal, needless to say — but then journalists never let a lack of hard data get in the way of an attention-grabbing headline.
@ Carolus Hibernicus
All that can be said for women who convert to Islam is that they’re not being liberated, but the opposite. I don’t care if they call themselves liberated, or feminists or spiritual, they’re simply finding themselves some brain chains to punish their self-loathing. They’re not in any way liberated.
In the US we have many ‘women-only’ gyms catering to women intimidated by having men around while exercising. Is this profoundly different?
Western art history courses talk about the “male gaze” quite often: easily seen in paintings like Bottecelli’s “Birth of Venus”. Where the naked woman gazes at the viewer (male), and the rest of the figures in the painting, (putti, angels, servants, lovers, 4 winds) gaze at the object of beauty. Hiding the woman completely away from view as in this newspaper article is at the other extreme of the male gaze. In both cases it’s men deciding for women.
I could be wrong in saying this, but women who choose to wear complete coverage of their body and head are really “choosing” to let the men choose for them.
Why specifically ‘complete coverage‘? Could you not say exactly the same thing about any choice of a woman to ‘cover up’? Wearing a longer skirt, loose pants, etc to minimize attention… how is that conceptually different?
It isn’t, particularly – the heteronormative male gaze is the dominant default in Western cultures, and in most others; the relevant distinction is that some discourses challenge it, and some capitulate to it. Feminism, on the one hand; Islam and magazine publishing on the other…
[And yes, women look at women… Lots of women didn’t think they should be allowed to vote, too.]
@jay Well, I will try to be specific: wearing clothing that men deem modest enough not to offend them or arouse their lust is a choice women are making based on how men behave, not on what they may want to do. Obviously in the context of Ophelia’s post above I am thinking of the cultural and religious edicts of Islam for women to cover up, especially their hair, for the sake of modesty. Perhaps “complete coverage” was a poor choice of words on my part.
My flippant japery in #2 aside, I do entertain the fantasy (and it is most likely just that, alas) that the CCTV and buzzers serve to conceal something truly subversive: that the “hair salon” is a front and that some consciousness raising* is being offered with the coiffures.
Ah well, a person can dream.
—
*I know, the term probably dates me.
I know, and I had a lot of fun with it when writing the Fashionable Dictionary. I can’t remember any of the jokes now (without looking them up), but they were funny…
@ 17, heh, yes, that would be nice. Unfortunately it sounds much more like Saudi Arabia – a hairdresser’s shop fortified and barricaded like a bunker, just because there is naked hair inside. Uggghhh.
This makes me sad. It seems very similar to what happens in Saudi. No doubt a lot of feminists would say, it’s their choice, and let’s all respect women’s choices and so forth. But not every choice every woman makes is a feminist one and this seems to be a good example of that to me.
It’s the anxiety surrounding the thought of men seeing hair that disturbs me… the CCTV, the frosted windows… just what do they think would happen if ‘strange’ men saw their clients’ hair? There would be an unstoppable, lust-crazed stampede? If so, why isn’t this happening on a daily basis in the UK or USA, as most women walk around with their hair uncovered?
Any sensible person would have to admit that the sight of women’s uncovered hair in fact doesn’t lead to men going mad with lust and becoming a danger to women. So what is it about? Women simply following the rules of their religion and culture unquestioningly? Or is there more anxiety involved with it – worry about what Allah or their male relatives would think if they uncovered their hair? Worry about going to hell? Different reasons for different women, I presume.
Or maybe when women fully buy into this they actually see it as a sign of their worth – I read one article a while back (I think on RD.net) quoting a Muslim teen proudly saying that she is a precious jewel, and precious jewels are always hidden away from prying eyes, because they are so precious. Obviously no-one told her that jewels are things, not people.
I also saw a programme last year where a young Muslim girl – about seven or so – had just started wearing the hijab and told the film maker quite concisely: “You wear the hijab and go to paradise – you don’t want to go to the hellfire [sic] do you?” That’s a level of clarity you’ll presumably never get out of an adult on this subject.
The last paragraph about Muslim husbands feeling all nice and ‘relaxed’ makes me feel a little bit ill. I can’t help feeling that this particular religious rule is just an abusive relationship dynamic writ large.
I think that lust and fear really are what this is about: the bottom line is men’s control of their desires (both their feelings and the objects of those feelings). Everything that can be done to control the behaviour, the feelings, the minds of women is done, appallingly and relentlessly and continually. And Islamists are insisting ever more loudly on being allowed to do it even in civilised countries.
Religion is the most effective tool to maintain control, reinforced by the atrocities committed against women who step out of line. Religion sets itself against lust and jealousy and rage etc. but it nevertheless provides all the justification that male believers require, especially by blaming the woman, the weak and susceptible, the temptress, the witch, etc. etc.
It seems to me that women have become the object of male hatred and resentment precisely because we men desire them so strongly, and so many of us, in our primitive, animal way, place the blame on the object of desire and never think of accepting responsibility for our own feelings — or sometimes, perhaps, are too frightened to do so, given god, hellfire and all the rest.
I think that this male hatred and suspicion is what underlies the behaviour of these women, whether they are directly and fearfully conscious of it or whether it is a cultural memory that controls their minds. Religion fills the mind with so many caveats and prohibitions that it is all but impossible for anyone to think through things clearly. All we get is arrogance and confusion in equal measure. It is difficult enough to talk about freedom of choice at the best of times but I believe that it is impossible here.
Jesus and Mo addressed this issue:
http://www.jesusandmo.net/?s=hijab
Those women should be commended for not provoking the uncontrollable lust of men.
[…] Schottland gibt es einen Friseursalon, der nach islamischen Regeln »halal« ist. Das bedeutet, dass der Laden von außen nicht einsehbar […]