Me, 2008, that's a doctoral 'hood'.

January 2012 marks my return to a place I prepared for academically but never mentally: teaching university students. I went from undergrad straight into graduate school and then on to finish a PhD. Along the way I lost sight of what I really wanted because of the grumpy academics that lined the walls of the English departments I studied in. Their officiousness (and multiple marriages) were not desirable qualities.

If I had been honest with my twentysomething self, I would have also known that my academic persona didn’t jell with the person I thought myself to be. I was in a small circle of friends who married immediately out of college and began the business of setting up their own households. I had no such prospects in sight: only scholarships for more degrees.

“I’m never going to use this degree,” I said. “I’m getting it because I’m young, not married, and I can do it now.”

None of this was false. Nor was it particularly helpful in building relationships with my advisory committee or the other graduate students who had publicly made scholarship their full time pursuit. The disconnect between how I spent my days and how I saw myself grew so large I left my PhD program immediately after finishing courses.

I went to work full time at a prestigious university, not as an instructor, but in Student Affairs. Now unless you’ve ever been depressed, scared of your roommate, or bored to tears, you don’t even think of student affairs. If you do, you think of it as a stepchild of the university: the place where less serious people go to stay affiliated to academic life. Depending on the institution, you may be a glorified babysitter.

Neither extreme was the case at the two places where I worked. The other professionals were thoughtful people, passionate about their work. But one thing bugged me: it seemed like the best part of their lives had passed them by.  They were always talking about students as if they were their hopes for the lives they never lived — the brilliance they hadn’t developed.

I did what I had by now perfected: I went sideways into a career change. From student affairs professional to publishing-know-it-all, I spent hours at the desk working for others. All the while the books, articles, chapters I was writing in my free time (nights, weekends, summers) were piling up. Publications kept piling up: publications I considered my hobby.

Five years went by. And when I decided that I was done working for others, a week after I quit my job, an offer came. At a university. This time on the teaching side.

Here I am: Five years later, many lessons learned, sure. But back where I started, those years I kept emailing drafts to a committee on the other side of the world validating my credentials to initiate others into how to read and write critically.

What have you been running from? What aspect of yourself are you hiding because it will set you apart from those around you?

Don’t take five years to let it burst forth. Turn now, today, to face it. And then see how you can support it.

My only regret is that the energy I put into keeping up the pretense that this isn’t what I wanted, I could have put into getting better at writing even earlier.

Image via Solitice Retouch

After saying I needed another account like I need exposure to Ecoli, I signed up for Pinterest. Call it peer pressure, or my mind’s need to indulge in the very visual after hours of wrestling with words, I’ve been pinning my heart away. My boards (the groupings of images I select) reflect my interests or intended projects: a Yum-o! list of recipes I’d love to try for my well deserving family, a Family Wedding collage of ideas for an upcoming celebration, and a Writing Projects smatter of snapshots of dresses,and  faces (including Robert Downy Jr.) who remind me of my characters. Getting slightly into it, I created a few more: one for research about Laos for an upcoming novel, another with Books Worth Reading in my heaps of free time, and Word! (Sayings I Love) for those times I need to dwell on the positive.

Revealing my Type-A personality, there’s this other board, Random, where I capture things that are interesting but don’t fit any of the others. “Random” for things that don’t On this board, I put a fairly innocuous image but one that stood out to me nonetheless (left).

I was respondent number three after two other women who commented on how much looking at photo itself made their feet hurt. I pulled together the sum of my feminine experiences and threw in a drop of my feminist inclinations: “So bad for you! Modern foot binding anyone?”

Someone said “this makes me dizzy,” which made me laugh, because if you have ever worn shoes like this, it is difficult to balance while walking. Then a male then commented: “Yes but we all know that in the flesh they probably look awesome.” Six people later, one woman said exactly what I was thinking: “Only the man comments that they look good, figures:).”

The deluge of comments that followed was astonishing; I almost left Pinterest because of the volume of notifications that flooded my inbox. Not because everyone took issue with the male, or agreed that his sentiment was why millions of us wore such high heels calling it fashion. There were many, many women who agreed, some who even defended him, that it wasn’t just men’s fault that we wear things regularly that are chipping away at the bones of our hips, legs, and knees.

And not to be left out of the debate, he felt emboldened enough to comment again: I am sorry you think it’s all men’s fault. I guess I must say I don’t really agree. Pintrest is conservatively 80 percent women posters and I would venture to guess that in the women’s fashion section 90 percent of the posters are women… Lots and lots of :3 posts on shoes that seem pretty tall… But yep it’s all because men like them. Ok. My whole gender is screwing up yours. I apologize for the collective. He deserves an award for exhibiting that special ability men have to turn around something that they are implicated in and blame it on women’s complicity.

Which of course we are. As someone else pointed out even later in the chain: “Statistically, for office jobs, a majority of interviewers prefer women in heels to women in flats. (Same for women with make up vs no make up). First World Problem eh?”

As a professional woman living in the Arabian Gulf, I do wear heels, though many around me wouldn’t consider them as heels because they are under the five inch height at which many female nationals use for their everyday wear.  That’s not to say everyone wears them, but Qatari women who don’t wear heels are often thought of different or not interested in fashion. A friend of mine was even told by her boss to wear heels to the office, so entrenched in his mind was the connection between Qatari women and high heels. She carried on in her loafers.

Since the days of working at the national university, where you have to trek between buildings in the hot sun, my everyday wares are more like one or two inches; I draw the line at three (I do have a pair of the size in this photograph, but I last only about ten minutes standing up). I’m in flats as I write this because today I have no one to impress and I want to get where I’m going quickly. But when I dress up? Heels, without a doubt. And I’m short, so in most cases when you see me at home, you’re surprised at my real height.

Even though I know from experience you can’t do any kind of heavy labor, or even walk long distances or stand for long hours in heels (nor squeeze pregnant feet into them), they’re the first thing I dig out if I have an important meeting. So is it okay to pick and choose when we use these prescriptions of beauty?

Can we, as some of the other posters said, wear them because they make us feel sexy, good, dressed up, without participating in the other ideas that restrict women’s movement?

Can we ever escape the cult of beauty? Or is beauty, as someone said on this ever increasing chain, inextricably linked to pain?

On Thursday afternoon, I co-hosted a teleclass to go with the course I wrote for the Global Academy on living and working in Qatar. Both writing the course and preparing for the teleclass were cause for rumination on  6 years of living in Doha. The most interesting part of the teleclass was when participants asked questions. There was one person on the call who had been living in Qatar since February 2011; she dialed in from Doha like I did because she wanted to know more about the place she had made her home. The questions were fairly standard: clothing for women, women in the workforce, and then the equivalent of “why do Qataries keep to themselves?”

In other fora I’ve talked about the tensions between expats and Qataries. But in this instance, I don’t think the caller had a bone to pick, she was genuinely curious about how to develop friendships with people in her new home base. I suffered from this earnest desire when I moved here in 2005. I came to the Middle East to experience life in an Islamic society since my scholarly work was focused on gender and Islam. Soon I found myself living and working in an expat enclave, far away from the Arabs and Arabic I had hoped to learn more about. I experienced first hand what I relayed to everyone on the teleclass; the numbers don’t work in anyone’s favor.

The numbers in Qatar create a unique situation where the nationals are actually minorities in their own country. I can think of few other places in the world where this is the case. Even in the U.S., my home since childhood, people may grumble about “real Americans” (those born there or white) versus “Americans” (those like my family who have naturalized) but the fact is citizenship can be gained. In Qatar, you are only Qatari if your father is Qatar (mothers are starting to get more rights if they marry non-nationals) and there is an intricate ranking system amongst the various tribes, family names, and points of origin.

During this time, I told every Qatari woman that I met that I was trying to make local friends. She would smile politely and I generally never saw her again; this happened on a regular basis and one night, at a very high profile public event, I thought I might have finally struck gold. A prominent official introduced me to his daughter who was also attending. She was my age, she seemed really interested in what I was doing (yes this sounds like dating and is largely how it felt). He told me that his daughter would call me. He would repeat this smile and phrase for the next three years. Needless to say: she never called.

I did an even risker thing than moving to this tiny country situated on top of Saudi Arabia: I left the bastion of Americanism and went to work for the national university. There was the game changer: I was the only non-Arab, non-Muslim, non-Arabic speaking employee in the entire building. Even the kitchen staff knew enough Arabic to take drink orders and conduct basic business. The numbers were finally in my favor – I was in the minority so I had no choice but to make connections, acquaintances, colleagues, who developed – over the course of three years – into friends.

The second thing I relayed to the teleclass, I also learned around my third year living here. When you have one population that is static (nationals) and one population that is a revolving door (expats), establishing new relationships becomes a dance with the law of diminishing returns. I used to offer lots of help, advice, rides, and listening ears to new arrivals. Quickly though I realized what  a draining proposition this is as I could predict in exactly what order, and what time of year, the topics they would want to discuss.

A summary of the first six months of the expat: The heat, the traffic, lack of bookshelves, the medical test, grocery shopping, how to find the spouse a job, inconveniences of Ramadan, the construction, getting an RP, and buying a car.

This isn’t to say that these aren’t all valid and important concerns; it’s just listening to them, helping people through them, and then two years later, having to do it all over again for an entirely new group of people, makes you realize how transient expat life is. Add to this the fact that by year four, nearly everyone I knew when I moved here had returned home, and you begin to see why making friends with expats might be an energy draining proposition.

I told the teleclass that nowadays when I see new people, I run in the other direction.

“You’ve gone local,” someone said and we laughed.

And honestly, it is a survival strategy that makes sense. If you have over 3 siblings, between them, your cousins, the larger circle of friends of these relatives, you have a ready made play set no newcomers needed. There are other cities that work like this and Pittsburgh was one of them; insular communities where everyone who went to high school together, now works and plays together.

I did eventually make Qatari friends – even now having dinner with the young woman who was supposed to be my friend in 2006  – but it was the outer edge of three years of living here. At that point, I guess most people realized I was likely to stick around and worth the investment. Or perhaps it took this long for the stereotypes about expats to wear off.

More on this soon.

In an age where diversity is defined as relations between the races and women’s struggles are thought of being long over, I raise a hand in dispute. I constantly have to draw my own boundaries and define myself – not allowing others the permission to apply other words, particularly a word so ineffective as cuteness. The fact of the matter is, cute is not an innocent word.  Hold on, you’re saying. Hold on. I like cute things. Okay – let’s play this game, then. Describe the cute things you like.

Kittens you say. Kittens are cute. And puppies. I just adore puppies. Yes, I agree. Kittens, as well as puppies and babies are cute – adorable even.

But women are not. At least not those who want to be taken seriously.

Language, it is a powerful force; it is the ability to name and describe someone. Words are as central to our ability to communicate as humans and distinguish us from all other types of animals. When words like cute are applied to grown women or even little girls, they cease to be innocent. Name the last time a tall broad shoulder man, dressed in an Armani suit, silk tie, and was described as cute. A red carpet fashionistas would never describe Daniel Craig as adorable. We don’t use cute to describe serious male actors, or anything masculine because, rationale sputters, they aren’t cute. Right. Men aren’t cute – that’s reserved for small animals, children, and women.

It’s troubling that an adult human can fall into the same category as two other beings with little agency or self-sufficiency and in constant need of attention.  The essence of cuteness is that it defines our understanding of gender roles and how they function in our perceptions of ourselves and others. Cuteness will never allow a female student to achieve her full potential in a classroom or any other arena. After all, she has her achievement. She’s cute.

As a working woman from the age of twenty one, and holding a full time position while finishing a Ph.D. in Postcolonial Literature, cute was perhaps one of the most dismissive words to reduce my work and me, to rubble. Being young often added to this dimension of being a non-adult; the entire first year of my doctoral program I constantly found older students asking me if I was starting my Masters or even worse, a first year student. Celebrate your youth, you say: you may wish you looked this young.

Cuteness doesn’t only function as a limiting gendered term. Cuteness also covers ethnocentrism and a failure to understand products and people of other cultures.  The politics of cuteness negotiates our reaction to things, people, and places that are outside our normal frame of reference.  Since the normal frame of reference is usually a Eurocentric model, this means cuteness defines those things that are non-western by infusing them with an inability to be taken seriously.

Being a woman of a stature that in most cultures is considered small, (I stand at 5” 1’) little often directly translates into belittle. During the course of office repartee, my forays are noted by other staff members as coming from, “the smallest person in the department,” changed my conception of cuteness. It was a category that continuously defined me, constantly changing to shadow my scholarly work, my professional profile. This was a not-so-subtle form of discrimination dodging my steps.

Maybe my sensitivity is derived from a lifetime of being near a 4’ 11” woman: my mother. I laughingly describe myself as the fat giant of the family – I tower over my mother and sister, neither weighing over 100 pounds. People’s reactions to my mother illustrate the inherent problems with this language.

“Mohana,” they say. There’s a glimmer in the eye. “Mohana, you’re mother is so little.”

This is often said in an almost whisper as if it’s a secret. I nod and try to smile, a plastic tightening of my lips. Then a triumphant, “I’m taller than her!” as if this is a considerable achievement rather than an accident of nature. Then, almost without fail, as if on cue from some invisible script: men, women, even teenagers.

“She’s so cute!”

It often bursts out, head shaking in amazement, as if it never occurred to people that a body that small could birth three children.

It was no secret my mother has felt the pressure of cuteness her whole life; it would boil over in every family fight we had.

“You’re not listening to me because I’m small!”

There the accusation would hang and at about eight, I sighed and gave up trying to explain that it in fact was not because she was small. It was because she was our mother. But for her, the cuteness that pervaded her life diminished her in the world’s eyes. It wasn’t until I got to graduate school and learned expressive words such as performativity and subjectivity that I understood what was happening to my mother – and why I resisted the word cute when it applied to me. As a result of her height, people ascribed cuteness to my mother, which resulted in a one dimensional construction of her identity both as a person and as a woman.  My mother’s understanding of herself and her status as person, her subjectivity, was informed by this primary idea that she was different from other people, and that her cuteness led to not being taken as seriously as others.

Yet while resenting it, she performs this identity of cuteness in her interactions with other people. She answers the phone in a shy girlish voice, whenever she laughs it’s really a tiny giggle but she covers her mouth, she lets my father dominate social situations even though she loves meeting new people.  Cuteness constructs and defines my mother’s understanding of who she is and who other people expect her to be.

We undermine the meaning of women, and strip the meaning from beings when we place non-descriptive and unempowering adjectives like ‘cute’ onto them. Other words that fit into this category include ‘sweet’, ‘nice’ and I think we covered ‘adorable.’ To battle against this insidious form of discrimination, awareness, time and introspection are the keys to reprogramming these often visceral responses.

Now I pause when describing people and consider the adjectives used and think on them. Perhaps a question to ask yourself: would I feel empowered if this were used to describe me? And a follow up: the next time you do use one of those adjectives, ask yourself, what was it about that person/thing/place that I was glossing over? What didn’t I want to understand/appreciate/think about? Rather than label something in an effort to give it value, however well intentioned, ask a question instead. “Wow, that’s beautiful. Does that pattern have significance?” goes a lot further toward building bridges than, “I just love that fabric! It’s so nice.”

I am now in my thirties, a young mother, and happily married woman who refuses to let anyone dismiss me because of my age or appearance. In order to be taken seriously, I take others seriously and also work really hard. It doesn’t take long before people find out that I am someone they can rely on, trust, and confide in. Any one of those qualities they would take over someone who is known for being aesthetically cute.

After a very stressful week and promises to myself as well as my close friends that I would not touch my email all weekend (despite not having a Blackberry, I often am ‘that girl’ these days on my Nokia if there is wireless internet available), I tried to pull together some modicum of energy to meet some social obligations I felt less than ready for.

Despite being four months pregnant, I managed to squeeze my growing belly into not one but two different dresses this weekend, first for a former student’s wedding and second for a friend’s graduation party. In the ex-pat community in Qatar it is an honor to be invited to a wedding – well in all societies a wedding invite is a treat – but here especially where there can be limited interaction between people of various ethnic groups and particularly since women’s gatherings are private domain where people literally let down their hair otherwise coiled beneath headscarves at work, the gym, or mall.

I’ve been to weddings before and confess to dreading them because often the invitation comes from a friend or relative of the bride. So you don’t know her, but find yourself in a room with hundreds of other women made up to rival any Hollywood movie premier, waiting for the bride’s arrival which is often hours past the start of the reception.

In this, Qatari and western weddings are similar: people waiting for the guest of honor, waiting to eat, in short, all dressed up and waiting. The first time you go to a wedding, this waiting is filled with nothing short of ogling because this may be the first time you see so much female flesh amongst the abaya clad set that normally perambulates as dark figures with hints of color on sleeves and headscarves on the streets and malls of the Gulf. I was no less guilty my first visit to a wedding (published as an article in Melusine literary magazine, http://tinyurl.com/cgzk5e).

Because women are so nondescript in public, the western is often shocked at the contrast in public where strapless, midriff, or skin tight are the norm. It’s the constant inability to understand what other cultures find instinctual: there is a division between public and private and no one feels the pressure to prove anything to those who aren’t in both spheres. After all, opposite of individualistic cultures, the importance isn’t on the life lived outside the home, but the one and the relationships connected to the home. As a young South Asian girl growing up in the U.S., I may no have worn an abaya but I certainly couldn’t compete with my American friends when it came to shorts, bathing suits, or prom dresses (when I was allowed to go to the occasions that necessitated any of these items).

For Qatari brides, they have some of the same restrictions of South Asian brides: even after they enter, it is unseemly to smile, dance, or in general be happy. With my students and friends I’ve had endless talks about how this particular tradition is wearisome and against what they would actually want to do. But they are bound to do the smile-less  fifteen minute minuet to the raised platform on the other end of the room because if they don’t, people will talk.

Every time we watch our wedding video with anyone (or ourselves) I see the same conflict on my face as my parents bring me down the aisle: I enter looking down, the exact opposite of all the Hollywood scenes; then my true personality must have kicked in because I dart up and give a smile to those who are nearest me – then the head goes back down. I hadn’t worn a veil but maybe I should have because it would have given me a traditional look in keeping with my demure downcast lashes.

Then imagine my joy on Friday night when the bride came in, doing the minuet walk to the other end of the room, and then broke out into a red-lipsticked-diva smile on her way to the waiting dais! After about twenty minutes of photos and videotaping, she came down and danced with us. I was very tired by this point having exceeded my normal bedtime by about two hours but when she approached me and extended her hand, I twirled. She said something I couldn’t hear because of the loud music.
“What?” I asked, leaning in close.

“Shway, shway,” she said, giving me dance advice.

Now I’m not sure if my new belly was throwing off my groove, but my whole life – admittedly lived amongst mostly white friends – I have been the one with the rhythm. Not so, apparently, that night amongst the mostly twenty something Arab girls crowding the dance floor.

The next night saw me as one of four people on time to a graduation party.

The foreigners are the only ones here I text to a Qatari friend who was on her way and we thought we were being fashionably late by showing up thirty minutes past the advertised time on the invitation.

The music this evening was pure khaleeji, or Gulf, not the Arab pop of Egypt or Lebanon. Most of the women in attendance were Qatari and you could tell when there was a popular hit – the dance floor would be crowded with women of all ages, shapes, and styles. This wasn’t the belly shaking of the night before – or the booty shaking of American dance floors. This was measured two stepping that took the dancers across the floor in parallel lines, the focus on their legs and footwork, with some graceful hand movements every once in a while. If someone was particularly inspired, she didn’t wait for partners, she just took to the middle of the room and danced – all by herself, under the weight of the eyes of the onlookers. I had nothing on these women – particularly not this group of women who not only knew these songs but clearly loved them – and was content to watch. This time it wasn’t with my ‘year one of arrival’ stares at their dress, or make up, or hair. It was in admiration for how they celebrated their creativity and sensuousness, not needing men or vulgar lyrics to aid them.

After a twenty minute stop for dinner which began at 10:30 p.m. the music roared up again as I said my goodbyes and slipped out. It was midnight when I got home, an hour I had not seen on the clock since the second month of pregnancy.

Parties and weddings are much better when you know the women who are at the center of attention – whether in Qatar or India or America. I’m so glad that after five years of living here, I can say that I do.  I knew things were changing because not only did I know the bride/graduate directly but I also didn’t feel ‘sad’ when the women left the room and put their abayas back on. I waited as one of my friends, resplendent in an orange gown, matching shoes, shawl, and plunging neckline with yards and yards of hair, wrapped up and we went down to meet her husband. Normally when people leave these things or the groom shows up at the end, expats exclaim at the change that comes over the room as it goes back to black.

Since I started wearing an abaya to the office last month (on days when I can’t get it together otherwise) I supposed this transformation wasn’t as stark to me. I know what’s underneath: beauty, power, grace. It isn’t because we’re ugly that we wear it. It’s actually the opposite. We have better things to focus on when out in public or at the workplace. And when we are at home, we shine.

For a long time I faced this question myself: should I settle for the nearest man in my life or should I pursue my dreams? Being a South Asian the customary reaction from friends and family was a sidelong glance any time I came home announcing my latest plans. A look that said, "Okay, but then what?"

I thought ethnic women were the only ones to succumb to this pressure or to be constantly inundated by it but it turns that Western women are no less liberated. In fact, in some ways, the lack of frank discussion about the pressure for white women to marry and live the fairy tale of happily ever after makes it harder on them than the ethnic philosophy of marry and the love will come.

Two conversations last week brought this to the light.

A friend, a good, dear friend, in a relationship that she herself confesses not to have the ultimate confidence in, said "And if I want to have kids, I don’t have much longer." This out of the mouth of a 31 one year old.

Implied lesson: I’m not going to get what I want so let me get on with the kids and family bit.

Then on the flight from Qatar to the U.S. I (admittedly observed on television) heard a similar refrain watching the British mini series, LOST IN AUSTEN. The main character says to her mom, "I have standards."

And the mother, achingly replies, "Standards are good sweetie but who will help you with your coat on when you are seventy?"

That is the question, I suppose, for all women, white, black, brown or otherwise.

But as I challenged 10 American college age women during a visit to my house over pizza, what does being alone really mean? Are we alone because there is not a man in our lives? 
 

Even on 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s character, Liz Lemon, goes on a date set up by her boss because one night she almost chokes to death while eating a T.V. dinner. So men not only help you in life their mere existence can help prevent your demise?

I’m not a misanthrope. I am happily married to a nurturing husband and the proud sister of a brilliant young business man.

In general though all cultures still seem to be promoting the sexist male privilege. A man at any age is able to father children and get married.

So women of the world unite. We can help each other with our coats while on our various journeys.  Perhaps with a little less pressure we’ll be able to make the choices to be in the places where we will meet Mr. Right.
 

Lately it seems that if you are without a child and a woman between the age of 25 – 25 then you’re society’s newest oddity. This is a funny realization because I qualify in this category, but more so because for most of the last seven years I qualified in another equally condemed status: single woman, no prospect on the horizon.

Why does society still think that we women are so strang outside of the house, on our own, without husbands or little hands gripping our skirts?

I understand this mentality in rural places all over the world But among the educated middle class of the rest of the world, why do we insist on putting these traditional expectations on women, but still sending them to school and out into the workforce.

If, as was my case, a woman wants to have these things but hasn’t found the right person and so instead of dropping into a deep depression carries on with her goals and ambitions, why do we make her feel like it isn’t enough until she has that husband? And then suggest that he isn’t happy without little ones?

I am now watching dear friends struggle through the barren landscape of modern dating – juggling the twin pressures of success and romantic expectations for women – it i a scary thing. I am excited for my friends with expanding families. The arrival of the first baby, then the second, the increasingly common navigation of the sadness of miscarriage. This is my role as a friend; to rejoice when she rejoices, to be sad when she is sad. But the chasm seems to widen as discussions of serving sizes, parenting strategies, ‘play dates’ encroaches.

How come we aren’t more supportive of the decisions that each individual woman makes?
Is it true, as my trainer says, that if you don’t have kids, you’re left out?
Why?

A friend and I were at the mall recently and found ourselves discussing why neither of us wear shorts anymore. This is odd, particularly for me, the girl child who argued fiercely with her mother to wear the fashionable cut offs in high school that gave Daisy her “dukes.” She found it equally so since growing up in California, she often showed off her ballerina legs.

We were both used to living in the conservative culture of the Middle East for several years and perhaps that was the most obvious reason. That plus the slowing of our metabolism as we raced towards becoming thirtysomethings.

The truth is I loved wearing short things in my teenage years which I spent most of weighing no more than 100 pounds. And then, as I became part of a committed spiritual community in college, I gave up the short hems as anything higher than the knee was frowned upon. Thus it was that the wild child of adolescence willingly forsook the shorts, bikinis, and other scanty wear of young shapely women the world over as a twentysomething.

Now on the doorstep of thirty, living in the Middle East, unexpectedly finding myself eating, traveling, and sitting next to women in hijab, I’m reminded again how much in common conservative cultures the world over have in common, regardless of the religion. For hijab means so much more than just the headscarf that is so viciously debated (a senseless debate if you ask anyone, because you aren’t going to make anyone stop wearing it). Hijab means covering the ears, the neck, arms, breasts, and hips – in short creating a cloak of modesty which covers the woman.

Coincidentally these are very similiar to the areas I was lectured against exposing at various faith based conferences in college; we were urged to be modest in our dress and looked in sympathy on immodestly dressed girls at those same conferences. They would learn if they wanted to stick around.

Religions  all over the world want to cover women up – to encourage men to think on other things – and in addressing women’s clothing Christians, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims are surprisingly in agreement. Modesty, each of them preaches, is essential to social order, to well behaved men, to protected women.

Not that I support the direction that young women’s fashion has headed in the last few years. A woman does like to have some secrets, after all.

But where is the line between what someone chooses and what is enforced, either socially, legally, or morally? 
How do we develop our codes? From our families, our communities, or our own sense of what makes us feel right?
Some combination of all three?