Boy burqas

Posted by Lianne Gutcher at 10:59 on 22 Jul 2010

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I have been keeping half an eye on the commentary following France’s decision to ban the burqa.
 
My main issue with face coverings is that they dehumanise. And as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown cited a campaigner against domestic violence as saying in a piece in the Independent: “This is a cloth that comes soaked in blood. We cannot debate the burqa or the hijab without reference to women in Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia where the wearing of it are heavily policed and any slippages are met with violence.”
 
In the Telegraph, however, Nesrine Malik asked why she should cast off the veil. She hated the niqab when she first wore it, but over three years,her “opposition gradually eroded” and she came to look upon her abaya and niqab as “a comfort and, eventually, a delight.”
 
Malik writes: “Saudi Arabia did not feel a more chaste place. Indeed,imposing the niqab may have had the opposite effect, so starved were the two sexes of the flirtatious attention that we all take for granted in the West. I have never been so indiscriminately pursued by men. And I was therefore thankful for the anonymity the attire gave me – a privilege the men did not share.”

Poor boys. But wait. A solution is at hand. Burqas for the boys.

In Holland, a young fashion designer, Marije de Haan, sent men down the catwalk in garments that are being likened in the fashion press to burqas.

I emailed Ms de Haan to ask if I could post pictures of her collection on my blog but she declined, saying she didn’t want to take the discussion of her shirts looking like burqas any further. You can see one of the designs on her website.

Ms de Haan also wrote that her collection had nothing to do with burqas but instead was inspired by her fascination for old crime scene pictures from the beginning of the twentieth century.  Whether or not Ms de Haan intended her designs to be reminiscent of the burqa, she has clearly touched a nerve.
 
Grace Jones thought that all men should be penetrated at least once in their lifetime (thanks to New York Girl for helping me to track down the quote – as she pointed out,  her overpriced masters in an obscure subject finally paid off!) and perhaps this should apply for burqa-wearing too.
 
Apparently– and I didn’t know this so thanks again to New York Girl – there was one Afghan women's organisation that put Afghan men in burqas – provincial councillors, police chiefs etc – and sent them out to the local market aspart of a gender sensitivity training course. It was quite an effective exercise: the men conceded that having to wear the attire was not so fun.
 
On the whole, I think burqas for men or women are not a great idea.

But thinking about it though, I’d be quite happy to see boy burqas take off in Kabul. They would work a treat covering up those horrid beards the expat boys insist on growing.

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