My
BODY is MY Own Business
By Naheed Mustafa
MULTICULTURAL VOICES: A Canadian-born Muslim woman has
taken to wearing the traditional hijab scarf. It tends to make people see
her as either a terrorist or a symbol of oppressed womanhood, but she finds
the experience LIBERATING.
The Globe and Mail Tuesday, June 29, 1993 Facts and Arguments
Page (A26)
HEADLINE: MY BODY IS MY OWN BUSINESS By Naheed Mustafa
I OFTEN wonder whether people see me as a radical, fundamentalist
Muslim terrorist packing an AK-47 assault rifle inside my jean jacket.
Or may be they see me as the poster girl for oppressed womanhood everywhere.
I'm not sure which it is.
I get the whole gamut of strange looks, stares, and covert
glances. You see, I wear the hijab, a scarf that covers my head, neck,
and throat. I do this because I am a Muslim woman who believes her body
is her own private concern.
Young Muslim women are reclaiming the hijab, reinterpreting
it in light of its original purpose to give back to women ultimate control
of their own bodies.
The Qur'an teaches us that men and women are equal, that
individuals should not be judged according to gender, beauty, wealth, or
privilege. The only thing that makes one person better than another is
her or his character.
Nonetheless, people have a difficult time relating to
me. After all, I'm young, Canadian born and raised, university educated
why would I do this to myself, they ask.
Strangers speak to me in loud, slow English and often
appear to be playing charades. They politely inquire how I like living
in Canada and whether or not the cold bothers me. If I'm in the right mood,
it can be very amusing.
But, why would I, a woman with all the advantages of
a North American upbringing, suddenly, at 21, want to cover myself so that
with the hijab and the other clothes I choose to wear, only my face and
hands show?
Because it gives me freedom.
WOMEN are taught from early childhood that their worth
is proportional to their attractiveness. We feel compelled to pursue abstract
notions of beauty, half realizing that such a pursuit is futile.
When women reject this form of oppression, they face
ridicule and contempt. Whether it's women who refuse to wear makeup or
to shave their legs, or to expose their bodies, society, both men and women,
have trouble dealing with them.
In the Western world, the hijab has come to symbolize
either forced silence or radical, unconscionable militancy. Actually, it's
neither. It is simply a woman's assertion that judgment of her physical
person is to play no role whatsoever in social interaction.
Wearing the hijab has given me freedom from constant
attention to my physical self. Because my appearance is not subjected to
public scrutiny, my beauty, or perhaps lack of it, has been removed from
the realm of what can legitimately be discussed.
No one knows whether my hair looks as if I just stepped
out of a salon, whether or not I can pinch an inch, or even if I have unsightly
stretch marks. And because no one knows, no one cares.
Feeling that one has to meet the impossible male standards
of beauty is tiring and often humiliating. I should know, I spent my entire
teenage years trying to do it. It was a borderline bulimic and spent a
lot of money I didn't have on potions and lotions in hopes of becoming
the next Cindy Crawford.
The definition of beauty is ever-changing; waifish is
good, waifish is bad, athletic is good -- sorry, athletic is bad. Narrow
hips? Great. Narrow hips? Too bad.
Women are not going to achieve equality with the right
to bear their breasts in public, as some people would like to have you
believe. That would only make us party to our own objectification. True
equality will be had only when women don't need to display themselves to
get attention and won't need to defend their decision to keep their bodies
to themselves.
Naheed Mustafa graduated from the University of Toronto
last year with an honours degree in political and history. She is currently
studying journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic University
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