How should I start my paper on Muslim women and the headscarves they wear? It has to have a globalization spin?
I am in an Anthropology course (my first Graduate studies course) and it is about Globalization. We were given a list of approved topics and have to connect those topics to globalization. The topic I chose was Muslim women and the veil or headscarf they wear. I am stumped at how to connect this topic to globalization…any ideas?
One thing that’s always interested me about more modern cultures where women wear Burkas or head scarves is how they’ve mingled some of the traditional rationalizations for wearing them with more contemporary feminist ideologies. A strange mash-up of ideas. I don’t buy them all but they are interesting and do expose a lot of the issues facing us with globalization that are otherwise unspoken.
One of the traditional reasons behind the Burka is that it helps to obscure a woman’s feminine appearance, and the head scarf has the same purpose, which has the apparent effect of reducing the role gender plays in socialization and discourse. I was speaking to a woman who wore a Burka, a physicist, who explained that she found it helpful in being taken more seriously by her male peers. In as such that feminism is a form of deconstructionist philosophy and that it has been spread through globalization of media and culture it’s interesting to me how it’s effected people’s perspective on this traditionally patriarchal belief in hiding the female form to alleviate sexual competition and gender role’s influence in society.
It’s also interesting how this sub-text of sexual freedom or lack-there-of is characteristic of a larger and deeply rooted angst over globalization in general. I’m paraphrasing something I read a long time ago but it came to the effect of how can there be true globalization when in one culture it’s taboo or even illegal for a woman to show her hair and in another encouraged for her to wear next to nothing. For all that’s written about the economy and politics of globalization I think this sexual tension, easily characterized by the head scarf, is a source of much deeper conflict seeing as it’s contentious even within the borders of small communities and only magnified when seen from a global perspective.
I am an American Muslim woman, we wear headscarves to retain our modesty. If a woman is completely covered and shows no curves than a man cannot lust after her. It prevents adulteries and having unpure thoughts about our peers. The wearing of a Hijab or dupatta is mainly custom if there is no face covering b/c it is just covering your hair. These women are only trying to be less sinfull but there is no such thing as a half sin. It is only religous to cover you entire body except for your eyes hands and feet. I have read an article about muslim sexual life. It was stated that Muslims that live in a muslim country and are not exposed to nudity have sex clothed b/c they have no desire for the private areas such as the breast b/c they have never seen so they don’t know.