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On wearing a head covering after 9/11
The day I wore a veil
Jackie Schifalacqua
Recently I had a bad hair day. I also had an appointment in the city to meet an old friend for lunch. What to do?
Happily, I arrived at a solution that would make me presentable. I wore a scarf.
I checked myself in the mirror before I left my house. My hair was showing on the top of my head and my square Gucci summer print scarf was tied behind my neck in hipster fashion. I was not inside a burka.
People on the bus as I rode to my luncheon, however, saw things in a different light.
Two elderly women (one of whom I had seen frequently on this route) made their feelings known about my fashion choice. One lady shook her head in disgust when I took a seat. The other glared at me as if I had just flashed my breasts.
On the other hand, two Nation of Islam women asked me how I was doing.
Waiter's disapproval
The fun was just beginning. At the restaurant the waiter, a handsome, dark-haired man in his 20s, was careful to point out all the dishes on the menu that contained pork or shellfish. When I ordered shrimp, he looked disapprovingly at me and muttered something under his breath.
"Well," my luncheon companion told me, "what you expect when you've got that thing on your head?"
That "thing" on my head was, until 2001, an accepted fashion statement among Western women. Only after 9/11 did wearing a headscarf became an exclusively Muslim practice.
This is a curious juxtaposition, because donning a head covering is traditional among all monotheistic people. It serves as a visible sign of an invisible order established by God. Since woman was created from a rib of Adam, she is second in chronological order to the male. In religious ceremonies, the veil denotes this status.
Blame Vatican II…
Until Vatican II in 1962, Catholic women were required under Canon Law to cover their heads at Mass. But when guitars came into the mass, the lid was blown off ecclesiastical pontifications and the veils flew away.
In Jewish tradition, women wear a prayer shawl when lighting the candles at Shabbat, and the mitpachat (Hebrew: scarf) is worn by Orthodox Jewish women.
Among the Amish and Mennonite, all women upon reaching puberty are required to wear a cap on their heads. The Slavic words for grandmother— babcia and babushka— indicate that these women wear scarves.
So you see, Islam instituted this tradition as a way of copying Jewish and Christian customs.
Then there is Gucci, Hermes and cold weather. All have required scarfs when the situation presents itself.
Why then should I— who merely practiced a long-standing Western tradition— have been singled out as a Muslim?
…or blame Fox News
I blame Fox News and its cable news ilk. The average Fox female anchor looks more like a showgirl than a journalist. Her tight-fitting skirt is often shorter than the wraps you see on the beach. And a broadcast day at Fox doesn't pass without a segment devoted to Muslin women and their attire. This feature is followed by an in-depth report about an honor killing somewhere— a death that occurred as a direct result of a Muslim teenager's falure to wear a scarf.
Fox's message is clear: A head covering no longer signifies your role in the order of nature. Now it indicates your membership in some dangeous alien sect.
Here's my question: Is wearing a skirt slit up to our thighs the only way left for women to show how liberated we are?♦
To read responses, click here.
Happily, I arrived at a solution that would make me presentable. I wore a scarf.
I checked myself in the mirror before I left my house. My hair was showing on the top of my head and my square Gucci summer print scarf was tied behind my neck in hipster fashion. I was not inside a burka.
People on the bus as I rode to my luncheon, however, saw things in a different light.
Two elderly women (one of whom I had seen frequently on this route) made their feelings known about my fashion choice. One lady shook her head in disgust when I took a seat. The other glared at me as if I had just flashed my breasts.
On the other hand, two Nation of Islam women asked me how I was doing.
Waiter's disapproval
The fun was just beginning. At the restaurant the waiter, a handsome, dark-haired man in his 20s, was careful to point out all the dishes on the menu that contained pork or shellfish. When I ordered shrimp, he looked disapprovingly at me and muttered something under his breath.
"Well," my luncheon companion told me, "what you expect when you've got that thing on your head?"
That "thing" on my head was, until 2001, an accepted fashion statement among Western women. Only after 9/11 did wearing a headscarf became an exclusively Muslim practice.
This is a curious juxtaposition, because donning a head covering is traditional among all monotheistic people. It serves as a visible sign of an invisible order established by God. Since woman was created from a rib of Adam, she is second in chronological order to the male. In religious ceremonies, the veil denotes this status.
Blame Vatican II…
Until Vatican II in 1962, Catholic women were required under Canon Law to cover their heads at Mass. But when guitars came into the mass, the lid was blown off ecclesiastical pontifications and the veils flew away.
In Jewish tradition, women wear a prayer shawl when lighting the candles at Shabbat, and the mitpachat (Hebrew: scarf) is worn by Orthodox Jewish women.
Among the Amish and Mennonite, all women upon reaching puberty are required to wear a cap on their heads. The Slavic words for grandmother— babcia and babushka— indicate that these women wear scarves.
So you see, Islam instituted this tradition as a way of copying Jewish and Christian customs.
Then there is Gucci, Hermes and cold weather. All have required scarfs when the situation presents itself.
Why then should I— who merely practiced a long-standing Western tradition— have been singled out as a Muslim?
…or blame Fox News
I blame Fox News and its cable news ilk. The average Fox female anchor looks more like a showgirl than a journalist. Her tight-fitting skirt is often shorter than the wraps you see on the beach. And a broadcast day at Fox doesn't pass without a segment devoted to Muslin women and their attire. This feature is followed by an in-depth report about an honor killing somewhere— a death that occurred as a direct result of a Muslim teenager's falure to wear a scarf.
Fox's message is clear: A head covering no longer signifies your role in the order of nature. Now it indicates your membership in some dangeous alien sect.
Here's my question: Is wearing a skirt slit up to our thighs the only way left for women to show how liberated we are?♦
To read responses, click here.
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