Strut strut strut
And let’s not neglect good old Iran, and its positive discrimination in women’s favour.
Police say they stopped more than 1,300 women for dressing immodestly on the first day of the campaign in Tehran. More than 100 women were arrested on Saturday; half of them had to sign statements promising to improve their clothing, the other half are being referred to court. The focus of the new campaign is to stop women wearing tight overcoats that reveal the shape of their bodies or showing too much hair from beneath their headscarves…The police complain that some young women strut the streets looking like fashion models – and it is not a bad description.
Oh, well then. Lock them up. If the police are complaining about what women ‘strut the streets’ looking like, then obviously the women have to be imprisoned for not looking the way the police think they should look. Obviously that’s all very right and proper: it’s up to the police to decide what women are supposed to strut the streets looking like. Naturally that’s a police matter; what else would it be?
What does “and it is not a bad description.” mean in this article?
I’m not being sarcastic or trying to make a point. I genuinely don’t understand what the author is saying. Are “body-hugging” overcoats fashionable in Britain right now or something?
I don’t understand it either – especially since the reporter is a woman. I guess just that, in her view, the women in question do strut and do look like fashion models? But why she felt compelled to add that, I don’t know. You might as well say ‘The police complain that these women laugh a lot – and it is not a bad description.’ It sounds like an endorsement of the police whinge, whether she meant it that way or not. If I were her editor I would query that phrase.
“The police complain that some young women strut the streets looking like fashion models – and it is not a bad description”
I take it that the writer thought it was by the police a good analogy drawn that “some young women strut the streets like fashion models” as opposed to what she personally thought.
I could be entirely wrong!
Are they not using the term “fashion model” pejoratively? Like “jezebel” or something?
Ignore my last post due to its extreme goofiness.
I think the reporter was intentionally equivocating for the sake of a weak play one words. “The police say the woman look like jezebels [police’s meaning], and yes, they do dress fashionably [her meaning].” In order to communicate something like “you’d be surprised how fashionably Iranian woman can dress.” But yeah, it was vague; as am I today.
I may be overly charitable, but could it not simply mean that these women are really good-looking?
Its comforting to know that this shower of barbarians will soon have nuclear weapons!
The other thing that was apparent from this and other reports is that this crackdown is very unpopular.
The regime in power in Tehran hs to be shriller and shriller, and continue to invent new enemies, both internal and external, to maintain its’ hold on power.
The Persian peole do not deserve this gang of thugs in charge.
Thank you, G. Tingey. I’m always happy to see someone recognize this and say it clearly.
As far as I’m concerned, the greatest failure of the Bush administration (and boy, is the competition for that “honor” tough) is the handling of Iran. Long before the incredibly stupid invasion of Iraq – which sealed the hegemony of the radical Islamist nutjobs in Iran and undermined the growing opposition against them – the Bushies alienated the Iranian people by lumping them into an “Axis of Evil” instead of allying with the citizens against their oppressive government. Students were rioting in the streets against the Islamic Revolutionary Council – a.k.a. The Thugs In Charge – and the U.S. did nothing but undermine their movement at every turn, in every way. And then invaded their neighbors.
Let’s look at the history of U.S. relations with Iran in the big picture for just a moment. First, we supported the corrupt and oppressive regime of the Shah. When that was overthrown (by people who hated us for supporting the Shah, surprise surprise), we supported neighboring dictator Saddam Hussein and his war against Iran. And then we decided we’d had enough of our former puppet Hussein’s shenanigans and launched a massive preemptive invasion against Iraq, effectively moving our entire military next door to Iran.
Gosh, I wonder why they don’t like or trust us?
Ignorance, incompetence and arrogance is the deadliest possible combination in foreign policy. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has long been characterized by a mixture of the three, but never so much so as under the present administration.
Which seems rather far afield from the topic of the post, but it isn’t – because Iranian women would probably be free to wear whatever the hell they want by now if the U.S. hadn’t fucked up so royally.
GT & G, well said indeed, most Iranians that I’ve read about over the last few years have no interest whatsoever in living under a theocracy, and it appears tragically that political expediency on all sides means we ignore the silent majority there.
Just an unashamed plug for Marjane Satrapi’s wonderful graphic novel ‘Persepolis’which makes all these points but from the viewpoint of a woman who has actually been through it all.
“First, we supported the corrupt and oppressive regime of the Shah.”
No, first we helped to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with the Shah, then we supported the corrupt and oppressive regime of the Shah.
Marjane Satrapi was here last year. She’s a tiger.
Oh, right! Thanks for pointing out the extra step of banal evil/stupidity in U.S. foreign policy I’d forgotten, OB.
And just imagine if the stupid short-sighted banal ‘tough’ ignorant Cold War hacks hadn’t done it – just imagine if Mossadegh had stayed and Iran had gone trundling on with democracy and freedom and peaceable progress, the envy of all its neighbours so that they couldn’t long hold out against its attractive example. Just imagine what the Middle East would be like now, not to mention the rest of the world. The stupid miserable venal bastards. How I hate them.
The fact that the U.S. once wrongly supported Sadam does not mean that they should have continued doing so G.he was of no further use as a bulwark against Iran and was a threat to the region so it made sence to topple him.
Richard, that was my take at the beginning of Iraq II, but frankly I bought the farm on our (UK) establishment’s cost-benefit analysis. Which was in a nutshell, a bunch of feckin’ nonsense, as my (far better informed than I) sources now tell me.
Hi Nick it may have all been b.s. but the way I see it is at worst it did no harm to show the moslem world a huge display of military bad temper!even better in the cradle of civilization as they see it,we cant hope to be liked but being feared is the next best thing.
Richard, if only that bad temper was contained and directed properly… Afghanistan was a whole other ball game, and I believe we should have gone in and kept the engagement level up, and avoided invading Iraq until (if ever) the UN made the case. Strategically we would be in a far stronger position now, and all the better off being able to show the world what could have really happened after the Taliban. A lot neater.
Trouble is Nick the U.N. has become toothless!this is probably our fault for letting the French have a say in world afairs,it was bound to end in tears!
‘…we can’t hope to be liked but being feared is the next best thing.’
How many other things did you consider?
I can’t believe rational people are actually promoting the chicken hawk National Review/300/Michael Ledeen position that “sometimes you just gotta pick up a small country and smash it against the wall to show we mean bidness.
My God. This kind of Nationalist Big Power fascism is as fundamentalist (and religious) as the theocrats’ version. If only we had sent in an army in 1976, think how much better things would be in the Middle East right now. I hope you’re typing this from an Iraqi camp right now? If not-why not-there are reservists in their 50s serving in this debacle!
I have no right to an opinion because I am not serving in the theatre in question?