Oppression and Disenfranchisement

Speaking of comments on online articles, early this year I came across a story about a proposed World Hijab Day, in which women were encouraged to wear a hijab in support of the Muslim women who do so every day. I was intrigued by the thought, although I thought it would be difficult to find a decent but cheap hijab and learn how to wear it in time. I clicked through to the comments to see what other people had to say on the subject. There wasn't much; one comment about learning to wrap it, and maybe one other about the cost.

One thing really surprised me about the comments: the number of people who confused the hijab, a headscarf that covers the hair, ears, and neck, with the burka, the garment that exposes only the eyes. Hijab was even defined in the article!

But most of the conversation was about the idea that wearing a hijab or a burka is a sign of oppression of women. A couple different people told about how and why Muslim women of their acquaintance like wearing the coverings. One story I remember in particular is that of a woman who had grown up in an area where the burka was required. When studying in London, she noticed the men looking her over in a way that men hadn't when she was wearing the burka and felt that they were thus more distracted from her words than the men she had grown up around.

And in response to this anecdote, someone said, in effect, "It's amazing how disenfranchised people can rationalize things to themselves to keep themselves from recognizing their oppression."

What I thought about that was that such a complete disregard to her experience is a lot more disenfranchising than a piece of cloth could be.

Makeup

This morning I went to check my Yahoo mail and saw on the front Yahoo page a story about a college student who took notes of the remarks people made about her appearance when she was wearing three different levels of makeup. You can read it if you want, but the results weren't surprising: girls commented more and were more likely to talk about the makeup (mentioning her not wearing any or asking how she got some effect), whereas guys were more likely to attribute the difference in her appearance to something within herself, such as how rested she was.

Then for some reason, I looked to see what other readers had to say about the story. One commenter said that where she lived (or he, but I'm guessing this was a woman), even the heavily made up condition was a bit underdone for a professional woman. And I thought, I could never live in an area with such a high expectation for a woman's makeup level, because I would have no idea how to apply that much.

I used to read makeup tips, and I've come across some useful ideas, but the thing is, makeup is used to highlight your good features and hide or diminish your flaws. Of course, to make that really work, you need a good idea of what your good and bad features are. Now, I'd been told that I have a nice face, but I've never seen a tip for how to use makeup to highlight your face as a whole. You have to work with individual parts. Well, okay, I'm supposed to have nice eyes. And there are plenty of tips out there for how to draw attention to your eyes.

But most of the makeup tips are about how to fix the flaws. Reading through all the articles full of instructions on how to make your eyes look closer together or farther apart, how to widen this or narrow that, it became apparent that everybody has something wrong with the structure of their face. I just couldn't figure out what was wrong with mine. So I kept reading through these beauty columns, looking for anything that would help me find my flaws to that I could fix them.

Then one day I realized that just because so many other women disliked their appearance did not mean that there was something wrong with mine. I am fine the way I am.