la_vie_noire | (no subject)

Via

the_future_modernes, this fascinating article by Fatema Mernissi:

Size six: The Western women's harem

‘In this entire store, there is no skirt for me?’ I said. ‘You are joking.’ I was very suspicious and thought that the saleslady just might be too tired to help me. At least I could understand that. But the lady added a condescending judgment, which sounded to me like an Imam’s fatwa. It left no room for discussion: ‘You are too big!’ she said.

‘I am too big compared to what?’ I asked, looking at her intently, because I realised that I was facing a critical cultural gap here.

‘Compared to a size six,’ came the saleslady’s reply.

Her voice had a clear-cut edge to it that is typical of those who enforce religious laws. ‘Size four and six are the norm,’ she went on, encouraged by my bewildered look. ‘Deviant sizes, such as the one you need, can be bought in special stores.’

[...] ‘I come from a country where there is no size for women’s clothes,’ I told her. ‘I buy my own material and the neighbourhood seamstress makes me the silk or leather skirt I want. Neither the seamstress nor I know exactly what size my new skirt is. No one cares about my size in Morocco as long as I pay taxes on time. Actually, I don’t know what my size is, to tell you the truth.’

The saleswomen laughed merrily and said that I should advertise my country as a paradise for stressed working women. ‘You mean you don’t watch your weight?’ she inquired, with more than a tinge of disbelief in her voice. Then, after a brief moment of silence, she added in a lower register, as if talking to herself: ‘Many women working in highly paid fashion-related jobs could lose their positions if they didn’t keep a strict diet.’

Her words sounded so simple, but the threat they implied was so cruel. I realised for the first time that maybe ‘size six’ was a more violent restriction imposed on women than the Muslim veil. Quickly I said goodbye so as not to make any more demands on the saleslady’s time or involve her in any more unwelcome, confidential exchanges about age-discriminating salary cuts. A surveillance camera was probably watching us both.

Yes, I thought as I wandered off, I have finally found the answer to my harem enigma. Unlike the Muslim man, who uses space to establish male domination by excluding women from the public arena, the Western man manipulates time and light. He declares that in order to be beautiful, a woman must look 14 years old. If she dares to look 50 or, worse, 60, she is beyond the pale. By putting the spotlight on the female child and framing her as the ideal of beauty, he condemns the mature woman to invisibility. In fact, the modern Western man enforces one of Immanuel Kant’s 19th-century theories: To be beautiful, women have to appear childish and brainless. When a women looks mature and self-assertive, or allows her hips to expand, she is condemned as ugly. Thus, the walls of the European harem separate youthful beauty from ugly maturity.

Western attitudes, I thought, are even more dangerous and cunning than the Muslim ones because the weapon used against women is time. Time is less visible and more fluid than space. The Western man uses images and spotlights to freeze female beauty within an idealised childhood, and forces women to perceive aging – the normal unfolding of the years – as a shameful devaluation. ‘Here I am, transformed into a dinosaur,’ I caught myself saying aloud as I went up and down the rows of skirts in the store, hoping – to no avail – to prove the saleslady wrong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Word.

I've thought for years that many white, cis, het, feminists have beome so caught up in getting what the men have, they haven't noticed the men have moved on to isolating them and modifying their behaviors in other ways and also encouraging them to detach from other women by having 'who's in and who's out'.

Yeap, yeap, pretty much. There is also the whole "men have nothing to do, women are just competing/whatever" rhetoric that is very insidious about beauty, weight and stuff.

fascinating link, thanks for the link.

You welcome!

You honestly post the most thought-provoking stuff. I love this.

Thank you, hon! but really, it's

unusualmusic who does so! XP

I feel like stores have been narrowing the sizes they carry over the last 15 years or so. Whereas before I was on the "slightly larger" size of the ranges carried, now I'm lucky if I find stores carrying anything my size.

I can't even imagine how much more they must pull those antics for women's clothing.

They definitely, definitely have.

Something that just occurred to me is that is pretty funny how western society had grown more condemning of "child sexualization" (at least vocally), but has really turned its beauty ideals closer to children physical appearance and size than those of an adult.

Edited 2010-04-18 20:11 (UTC)

I don't really think there has been -actual- increase in condemning of child sexualization- I think it's probably about the same as it always has been ("the music! the internet!" etc.), but the mainstream sexualization has increased- consider Britney Spears to Miley Cyrus.

I remember reading a joke somewhere that Disney's formula was "stars the kids can relate to AND the parents want to have sex with" and that seems to be the pattern.

Yeah, yeah, well, that happened in this decade. (Also, I didn't mean to say that there is correlation with child sexualization and fuller figures seen as beautiful, I just thought that there was something very particularly... western in leaving behind things like child marriage and starting to penalize things that have to do with sex with children while making adults look like children to be sexually desirable.)

And yeah, the thing of "sexy high school girls that 40 year-old men can lust after" is a today's issue.

Edited 2010-04-18 20:34 (UTC)