Breaking Out Of The Cultural Burka

Gee when an American superstar said this the right wing attacked her for being a bimbo. Now let's see what happens when a Muslim woman says the same thing.

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Muslim Madonna' - Brace for another muslims' riot, bloodshed ' Feb 24, 2006

Muslim pop singer Deeyah has irked the Muslim world with her provocative new music video that shows her stripping off a burka to reveal her bikini-clad body. Deeyah claims, the video, What will be? deals with Muslim women's rights and female empowerment, as it also features Muslim women who have fought for freedom of expression.

Once again the body is the centre of politics and theology, the body not as self ownership of ourselves but as a commodity. And it is as much objectification of womens bodies, by declaring them sexual and evil, to say must be covered up or to say they should be exploited in bathing suit beauty contests. 'Beauty' contests remain a commodifcation of women and their bodies as much as covering them up. Again the message is that women are objects, not subjects, of desire. And in order to be desirable an entire industry exists to recreate women in some male ideal image.

And even bikini wearing singers in music videos as brave and liberating as that is remains with the limits of objectification. But it is step towards womens liberation even within these limits.

To resist the reactionary attitudes against our bodies and against the myth of the fall of Eve, which is the source of patriarchical monotheisms fear and hatred of the body, is to accept the body as natural. The only radical ideology that does is naturism which of course is still taboo even in the west. Which is why nudes sell magazines.

Naturam expelles furca tamen usque recurret.

"You expel nature with a pitchfork, but it just comes back."

Horace

Which is why the body is still the central debate within the feminist movement. The Playboy debate, is it or isn't it pornography ,remains with us both in the U.S. and UK . As a result what Deeyah is doing will be appauled by some and denounced by others, not just mullahs but by sex negative feminism. What Deeyah is doing is what new wave feminism is doing in the west, challenging the ownership of womens bodies. Or as the second wave Feminists called it Our Bodies Our Selves.

In Her Own Image

Artist/musician Gwynn Hermann tears down artistic barriers

Hermann attended Herron School of Art at IUPUI and began work on a photography degree in 1994. In those days, she said, the photography department was known for its feminist teaching staff. “Some hated it — especially the male students — and some loved it; I was in the latter category. Feminism really did change the course of the art world; it challenged the status quo, forced people to reconsider, or just plain consider for the first time, the assumptions put forth about roles of gender and identity, class and status. Feminism demanded that the voices and viewpoints of people other than old/dead white men be heard.”

Her work, even in a tolerant environment such as Herron, was controversial. “I began to make a long series of self-portraits, often nude, to the point that some of my classmates begged me to shoot something else. I did self-portrait work for two reasons. I wanted to change the poor self-image I had. I’d struggled with depression and anxiety attacks much of my life, and I got to a point where I hated myself and couldn’t trust myself, and I knew that had to change. I embraced self-portraiture as a way to kind of catch me when I wasn’t looking.”
She paused to catch her breath. “It’s hard to explain.”

Except this new wave feminism is saying sexuality is ok showing our bodies off is empowerment much to the chagrin of second wave feminists,conservative moralists and now the mullahs.

Women have moved beyond the self awareness stage of feminism to what Wendy McElroy calls Self- Ownership. And within the limits of culture that is the challenge in Iran as much as it is in the good old USA, that other theological nation ruled by mullahs. Ironic since the United States sees itself as the very ideal of capitalism, which demands the constant destruction of social values.

Modern capitalism has allowed the birth of the independent woman who is no longer economically dependent on her husband.

Camille Paglia

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