Models strutted down the runway at Paris Men’s Fashion Week in France two weeks ago, wearing what designers believe embodies the future of fashion. Instead of seeing the model’s chiseled and manufactured bone structure, many of the models’ faces were hidden under balaclavas. Lauded as one of the main trends of the fashion showcase, the hypocrisy was disgusting.
While the balaclava, a cloth that covers everything but the eyes, is celebrated as the pinnacle of design in a nation revered for its fashion history, that same nation banned children from wearing hijabs, a veil worn around men outside the immediate family, less than a year ago. In addition to hijabs, many cultures wear a roosari, a looser fitting head garment, or a burqa, which covers the lower half of the face as well. To be clear, the religious practice of wearing a form of headdress in nations with freedom of expression is a choice. Our willingness to accept balaclavas as a regular part of fashion shows only one thing. The world does not care about what people are wearing; it cares about who is wearing it.
The French tirade against hijabs is not a one time activity. Less than a month ago, the French Senate passed another bill that banned athletes from wearing their hijab while participating in sports. Senate members described the bill as banning “any dress or clothing which would signify inferiority of women over men.”
It is not simply the ban. This sentiment transcends the law. Countless times, I have assured dumbstruck peers that my grandmother, who wears a roosari even when in the U.S., is not forced against her will to do so. Over time, I have come to realize that those baffled faces are a symptom of a preconception that Muslim women lack choice, individuality and a sense of expression.
This sort of stigma is weaponized across the world. In 2001, then-First Lady Laura Bush used the White House’s weekly radio address to lambast the hijab under the guise of a Taliban critique. Discussing the Taliban’s oppression of women and children, Bush slid in women’s use of hijabs as proof. With U.S. military intervention, Bush claimed “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
It is a farce. The United States, France, Canada, India and all other countries that restrict hijab use do not do so in the name of women’s liberation. If they were, you would not see measures that restrict a woman’s right to her own body here in the U.S. in 2022. They do so to demonize historical Islamic practices. Bush’s comments expose it. True feminism, which she uses as a reason for bombing the Middle East for the next 20 years, does not look like banning a woman’s religious practice. That is substituting one form of oppression for another. True liberation, true feminism, means allowing Muslim women to have a choice.
You see, if a White woman were to wear a balaclava, no one would raise their eyebrows and lament that the woman is oppressed and inferior to men. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West, in fact, wore masks that covered their entire faces as a form of avant garde expression at the Met Gala. The parallels are painful. Just three years ago, Prime Minister Boris Johnson likened women in burqas to “bank robbers” and “letter boxes.” For decades, White women have worn “head scarves,” which is the exact same style as Middle Eastern roosaris, and are praised for their beauty. Wearing these garments, head scarves and balaclavas, are a sign of privilege.
And, yet, violence against Muslim women persists. Following Boris Johnson’s nauseating remarks, there was a 375% increase in attacks against Muslim women. Middle Eastern culture and fashion have been appropriated by the West, but violence and the bigoted gaze remains fixated on Islam.
Paris Fashion Week signals the future of fashion. It’s hard to imagine UO students won’t someday wear balaclavas too as they seek warmth in trendy fashion on campus. It is crucial to highlight the hypocrisy as the style enters the mainstream. To cover your face without consequence is a privilege that Muslim women have fought for decades to maintain. Covering your hair, a choice that many women make, including in my family, has justified the demolition of the Middle East in the name of White feminism.
I will not suggest banning the balaclava on a campus. That, too, would be a restriction of freedom, even though prime ministers and presidents of several “first-world” countries have paved precedent for such a suggestion. Instead, I ask that you recognize that you are not inferior to anyone else when you pull a balaclava over your head, despite what the French Senate might have you believe. I ask that you abandon that instinct to think of burqas, hijabs and other Islamic headdresses as a form of oppression in America. It is the same choice. Recognize that not everyone gets to make that choice freely.
