Catwalk ready, catwalk strut and catwalk ‘tude seem so antithetical to what we know and expect, sometimes zealously, as Islamic modesty. This isn’t about policing what we wear and how or about casting judgment, but about the sort of culture we’re creating for Muslim women’s dress that is no diferrent than the images and lifestyles sans hijab we criticize. The Mipsterz video is hard to stomach for so many because it throws the increasing Islamofashionista culture into your face. The process of creating ‘normal’ is also stripping us, especially women, away from central parts of our faith. We’re so incredibly obsessed with appearing “normal” or “American” or “Western” by way of what we do and what we wear that we undercut the actual abnormality of our comunities and push essentialist definitions of “normal”, “American” and “Western.” In that process of searching for the space of normalcy, we create ‘normal’ and through that a ‘good’ Muslim. And in all of this, we might just lose that which makes us unique: our substance. In the name of fighting stereotypes it seems we’re keen to adopt – especially for Muslim women who wear headscarves – tools and images that objectify us (either as sexualized or desexualized as depoliticized or politicized) rather than support us where we need that support. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, in and of itself, but what a strange dissonance and incongruence in imagery?Īnd if that isn’t textbook objectification then I think I’ve been raging against the wrong machine since I was 14.
#MUSLIM GIRLS NAME SANA PROFESSIONAL#
Ibtihaj is shown as a professional badass and the rest are shown as professional hot women who skate in heels and take selfies on the roof. Instead of showing what makes each and every one of those women Herself, they’re made into this superfluous conformity of an image we, as the audience, consume and ogle at because hey, they’re part of the aesthetic of the video. As the credits below the video mention, the rest of the women (Muhammad is included in this) are merely “models” even though every single one of them has a central and important function and contribution to her respective community and in her field. Muhammad’s form as a unique Muslim woman is complemented by her matter – the stuff that makes her her makes her Ibtihaj. Those images are powerful and beautiful in what they are saying. Other than that, however, all we as the audience are afforded are images that, simply put, objectify the Muslim female form by denigrating it completely to the physical. The only semblance of purpose seems to come in with the images of Ibtihaj Muhammad who is shown in her element, doing what she does as a professional athlete. The video, produced/created/directed primarily by Muslim men (oh hey voyeuristic-cinematography-through-the-Male-Gaze heyyy), doesn’t achieve anything to really fight against stereotypes: it is literally young Muslim women with awesome fashion sense against the awkward backdrop of Jay Z singing about Miley Cyrus twerking. If this video is supposed to be ironic, this 90’s kid from the generation that invented contemporary popular irony (you’re welcome) totally doesn’t get it. The purpose, she and some other argued, was to show the ‘Muslim rejects’. One of the women in the video even mentioned that it was created to fight against ‘stereotypes’ by expanding the types of Muslim women we are shown and fuse the American with the idea of ‘The Other’.
The video doesn’t really seem to have any purpose aside from showing well-dressed, put together Muslim women in poses perfect for a magazine spread. If anything, by stretching, its apparent purpose is to highlight the diversity of Muslim American women, as several comments under the video noted, as ‘normal’ and ‘fun’. Aesthetically, it’s really hip, smooth, fierce and, for all intents and purposes, cool. The video, set to Jay Z’s Somewhere in America, features well produced shots of stylin’ hijab clad women strutting their cool in and around random urban areas. Why the attacks? Because I, like many Muslim men and, more importantly, women, feel really uneasy about a video released yesterday by the group (movement? cultural tour de force?) Mipsterz – Muslim Hipsters. After voicing my critiques on the subject on Twitter, I was attacked as being ‘a hater,’ ‘catty,’ ‘jealous,’, ’emotional’, ‘judgmental’ and, my favourite one, a ‘feminazi with a political agenda.’Īs if there’s any other kind of feminazi. It’s a bit sad that I’m ambivalent about writing this column.
0 kommentar(er)
