Shuriken
12-05-2003, 12:03 PM
THE BURKA AND THE BIKINI
by Marie Cocco
No one could have predicted going from burka to bikini quite so fast.
But when freedom arrives, modernity follows. This is the triumph and the trial of Vida Samadzai.
The 25-year-old college student caused a sensation in her native Afghanistan last week when she was seen on international newscasts strutting across a beauty pageant stage in a red bikini, her head high and her eyes ablaze with confidence. Samadzai, a University of California student who left Afghanistan years ago, has said she views her participation in the Miss Earth contest in Manila as a celebration of freedom, a message that Afghan women no longer must cower in submission.
The Afghan Supreme Court promptly denounced her for violating the tenets of Islam and the "culture of the Afghan people." Afghanistan's embassy in Washington declared her participation to be a personal choice that "does not reflect the position of the Afghan government."
Surely it's doubtful that American feminists who worked to free the Afghan women from their oppression under the Taliban considered the right to be a beauty queen as part of the manifesto.
But then, hypocrisy always has pervaded the feminist conversation about women's bodies. The same women who protested the Miss America pageant in the 1970s were simultaneously consulting "Our Bodies, Ourselves" — an illustrated manual that had as its premise the idea that women should control and celebrate their bodies as they see fit. American women who despair at Britney Spears as a role model for their daughters find a certain delight in "Sex and the City."
We can afford the luxury of these arguments. Afghan women cannot. That is the paradox of the Afghan pageant contestant.
Politically active Afghan women say they support Samadzai's right to choose the runway as a route of self-expression. Still, they see it as a dangerous distraction, giving Islamic fundamentalists potent justification in their efforts to block the halting advance of women's rights.
"It gives an argument for the extremists to sideline women and women's imaginations," said Sima Wali, president of Refugee Women in Development, a group that works inside and outside Afghanistan on women's political empowerment. "It becomes a powerful excuse for those who want to keep us from winning our power."
The freedom of Afghan women still is routinely restricted, their lives at risk from pervasive violence. The United Nations reports that rape and gang rape, the kidnapping of girls, forced marriage and the sale of young girls into marriage continues. So does self-immolation by women seeking to escape these conditions.
In August, the U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai reestablished an office of "vice and virtue" within the Ministry of Justice, a bureau that, under the Taliban, was charged with determining acceptable behavior. According to a progress report by Vital Voices, an international network of women political activists, the new director of vice and virtue has said he abhors the Taliban's harshness toward women but cautions against too much progress. Wearing makeup outside the home, Mohammad Wazir Razi Kabuli has said, would be going just too far.
The draft constitution for Afghanistan, unveiled yesterday in Kabul, declares that "no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam." But it also prohibits discrimination and says all citizens have equal rights. The document declares education to be "the right of all citizens," but it speaks in a separate section of "balancing and promoting" the education of women.
Afghan women are now allowed to work, but are restricted on commuter buses to three seats in the back. They are allowed to take part in politics, but their microphones at the pivotal Loya Jirga meeting last year were shut off after five minutes. The burka is gone as a symbol of oppression. Now it is worn regularly as a shroud required for security.
In this cultural conundrum, where does the politics of a beauty pageant fit?
It is impossible to be angry at a college woman who says she used it as a symbol of liberation, not degradation. And if the hoopla forces us to look again at the real humiliation of women in a country where the United States is so heavily invested, Samadzai's red bikini will have spoken loudly enough.
by Marie Cocco
No one could have predicted going from burka to bikini quite so fast.
But when freedom arrives, modernity follows. This is the triumph and the trial of Vida Samadzai.
The 25-year-old college student caused a sensation in her native Afghanistan last week when she was seen on international newscasts strutting across a beauty pageant stage in a red bikini, her head high and her eyes ablaze with confidence. Samadzai, a University of California student who left Afghanistan years ago, has said she views her participation in the Miss Earth contest in Manila as a celebration of freedom, a message that Afghan women no longer must cower in submission.
The Afghan Supreme Court promptly denounced her for violating the tenets of Islam and the "culture of the Afghan people." Afghanistan's embassy in Washington declared her participation to be a personal choice that "does not reflect the position of the Afghan government."
Surely it's doubtful that American feminists who worked to free the Afghan women from their oppression under the Taliban considered the right to be a beauty queen as part of the manifesto.
But then, hypocrisy always has pervaded the feminist conversation about women's bodies. The same women who protested the Miss America pageant in the 1970s were simultaneously consulting "Our Bodies, Ourselves" — an illustrated manual that had as its premise the idea that women should control and celebrate their bodies as they see fit. American women who despair at Britney Spears as a role model for their daughters find a certain delight in "Sex and the City."
We can afford the luxury of these arguments. Afghan women cannot. That is the paradox of the Afghan pageant contestant.
Politically active Afghan women say they support Samadzai's right to choose the runway as a route of self-expression. Still, they see it as a dangerous distraction, giving Islamic fundamentalists potent justification in their efforts to block the halting advance of women's rights.
"It gives an argument for the extremists to sideline women and women's imaginations," said Sima Wali, president of Refugee Women in Development, a group that works inside and outside Afghanistan on women's political empowerment. "It becomes a powerful excuse for those who want to keep us from winning our power."
The freedom of Afghan women still is routinely restricted, their lives at risk from pervasive violence. The United Nations reports that rape and gang rape, the kidnapping of girls, forced marriage and the sale of young girls into marriage continues. So does self-immolation by women seeking to escape these conditions.
In August, the U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai reestablished an office of "vice and virtue" within the Ministry of Justice, a bureau that, under the Taliban, was charged with determining acceptable behavior. According to a progress report by Vital Voices, an international network of women political activists, the new director of vice and virtue has said he abhors the Taliban's harshness toward women but cautions against too much progress. Wearing makeup outside the home, Mohammad Wazir Razi Kabuli has said, would be going just too far.
The draft constitution for Afghanistan, unveiled yesterday in Kabul, declares that "no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam." But it also prohibits discrimination and says all citizens have equal rights. The document declares education to be "the right of all citizens," but it speaks in a separate section of "balancing and promoting" the education of women.
Afghan women are now allowed to work, but are restricted on commuter buses to three seats in the back. They are allowed to take part in politics, but their microphones at the pivotal Loya Jirga meeting last year were shut off after five minutes. The burka is gone as a symbol of oppression. Now it is worn regularly as a shroud required for security.
In this cultural conundrum, where does the politics of a beauty pageant fit?
It is impossible to be angry at a college woman who says she used it as a symbol of liberation, not degradation. And if the hoopla forces us to look again at the real humiliation of women in a country where the United States is so heavily invested, Samadzai's red bikini will have spoken loudly enough.