I find it offensive to try to hijack this as if it's yet another example of patriarchy, and that it's a political issue which only applies to women.
The reality is that in many situations men have to wear clothing which is neither comfortable nor freely chosen.
Try wearing a tie and a stiff-collared shirt for ten or twelve hours and see how free and liberated you feel. Try turning up to a job interview wearing whatever you feel like wearing, and watch how your decision not to play the appropriate dressing up game completely trumps your qualifications and abilities.
Is it different? Not really, no. A tie isn't quite as ridiculous as a burqa, but it's hardly the epitome of sanity, especially in hot weather.
Is it religious? Well, it's certainly ideological and entirely symbolic. It's not as if men wear ties for practical reasons.
Bizarrely, not wanting to wear a burqa is seen as rather westernised, enlightened and rebellious, while not wanting to wear a tie is framed as being adolescent, rather immature, and - most of all - unserious.
If so, I must have missed that. Last time I looked Sarkozy was claiming they were all gangsters and criminals, by definition.
Any bets on whether we'll see someone in a hajib having a serious role in government before we see someone in a hoodie?
Seriously, I should not need to explain that there's a bit of a difference between not being invited over for supper and not being "welcome on our territory."
Free minds, not hair.
And on terminology: as a rough reference, hijab is a style of dress where the head and neck are covered but the face free; niqab also covers the face but leaves the eyes visible; the burqa features a total head covering with a grille before the eyes. (In all versions, the body is covered down to the ground).
So far as I can recall, the people who are 'not welcome' haven't been called out en masse as thugs and criminals and haven't been subject to systematic police abuse.
As for a 'serious role in government' - of course, teen males aren't serious, by definition, and therefore not fit for government. Everyone understands this. Which is why Sarkozy and Burlesconi are such perfect models of political seriousness, carefully selected to be the acme of maturity and effectiveness from the populations they represent.
The hijab is perfectly serious business attire, and the burqa is potentially perfectly serious business attire. Teen fashions aren't, and will never be. (Except in very limited contexts like the creative industries, where a certain amount of wackiness is tolerated.)
There's no conflation - you're simply not seeing that extremely rigid kinds of discrimination are so institutionalised they're invisible.
Of course there's conflation. On the one hand, we have people who want to be able to dress however they want at work in certain types of jobs and aren't allowed to take off their tortuous ties while at work in certain types of jobs. On the other hand, we have women who are being told by the president of the country that they may not wear a certain clothing while setting foot on French soil or YE SHALL BE CAST OUT. This from a man who, as you pointed out, has repeatedly demonized those with the misfortune to lack the proper skin color and bear non-Muslimy names.
But yes, by all means, let's make this about ties, because that's the real discrimination.
Of course there is socio-cultural pressure on all of us to act and dress in certain "acceptable" ways. Every society has that, and this is not about my ability or inability (thanks for that, though) to see it. Sarkozy has chosen to throw the coercive weight of the state behind his side.
My sympathies go to those who face competing pressures from two different societies, which they inhabit simultaneously, and which expect opposing behaviors from them. Politicizing their dilemmas does them no favors.
Just saying.
it is fascianting and proves your point that specific spaces and symbolic structures are generated when particualr dress conducts want to be expres in order to satisfy the other big "western"myth, the generation of the "growing and mature" self.
When peopel gather in nude beaches (or theya re created by the government so that only nude people go), when rave parties are structured, when dress code is ubiquous in semi-pubic spaces as discos, you know that dress codes are interanlized and can become conscious caste markers or full identity and space generators.
there is no such a thing as "free" dressing or "dressing as you want". Not here.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
