Image can determine reality, though more often it simply reflects it. The Muslim women who not only wear the burqa, but embrace it as a point of security, look to observers like sufferers of the Stockholm Syndrome -- i.e., they identify with the strictures of their oppressors in order to procure emotional and physical security for themselves while managing a precarious intellectual assonance with a demeaning and limited situation.
Often Muslim men (and women) point to the Western images of feminine fashion, whose trend of the last thirty years has become degraded to such an extent that ten year old girls dress like prostitutes and think they're 'cool.' This vogue of trash fashion leaves nothing to imagine and even less to desire. Muslim men in Western culture blame these 'fashion statements' for their gang-raping of Western women and children. "It's not our fault; they advertise their goods and we are men, we cannot help it." That defense is as old as it is limp.
And now comes the Honorable Madame Secretary of State for the United States of America, striding forth in a long, severely cut black coat with gold buttons. A skirt at the knee. Shiny black boots with three inch heels. No trash trends for her, and no boring sack suits with pearls and sensible heels. Madame Secretary, you may have started a revolution among Muslim women. 
Now it remains to be seen in what manner Hillary will respond. Stay tuned.
2 comments:
Everything about our new Secretary of State is out of the ordinary!
When I was young and foolish and a feminist--she was the kind of woman I thought I was fighting for. The Hilarys etc. don't inspire me--they came to power on the coattails of the men they married. Those intelligent, but dumb women who encourage the victimization of women are another group who leave me completely cold. But Condi Rice, Ph.D. is a true self-made woman. I hope she will run for president, because I'd vote for her in a minute.
You and a few million others of us...as time goes on and I get a better feel for how other women are interpreting her, I'll report back.
Intuition says she's what I call a Bridge Woman...simply because of who she is she reaches sensible feminists, manly men, and guys who wish they didn't have to kow-tow to the Witch Brigade...and who don't have to in the election booth where no one can see them.
Amazingly, though, I believe she will appeal to those that Kerry's daughter campaigned to so blatantly--the uneducated, unmarried single mom. Condi even reaches women in the underclass, and she does so simply by being who she is.
There is simply no one else like her.
~D
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