urbanmennonite.com

Calgary Herald (via Slog) is running a story on the resurgence of the headscarf as a fashion statement. The Herald — giving some pointers on how to wear your latest Louis Vuitton accessory — tries very hard to posit this latest fashion craze as some sort of harbinger of a new administration:

It reminds us the freewheeling youthful optimism of the 1960s, of modernism and futurism, of a sense of endless possibility. It is a symbol of change, and this year above all is about change, whether it be a change in government or a change in attitude about our world.

Umm. OK. The scarf is not John McCain; the scarf is Obama. Got it.

Oh, and also

It evokes the fashions of the faraway cultures we see on the nightly news: the brilliantly coloured sarongs worn by graceful African women; the head scarves Muslim women drape over their hair for modesty’s sake; the shawls female foreign correspondents wrap themselves in to respect their conservative subjects.

Slog asks what a Westerner sees when they see a headscarf. As some commentators point out, that probably depends on your background: Aunt Jemima; your Polish grandmother; some convertible-driving, chain-smoking Long Island mother from 1955.

Frankly, I’m less likely to see a modern-day Jackie O when I see a woman in a headscarf and much more likely to see religion. Which is sort of dumb. I mean, Grandma wore a scarf all the time and that had nothing to do with her covering and everything to do with the wind and keeping her long hair from escaping the bun. Hmmm … long hair. OK. Still religious then.

The weirdest symbol mis/appropriation of head coverings I’ve ever seen was when I was in college and two first-year women turned converted became River Brethren and began to wear coverings. One of them went all out with the long, dark cape-like dresses where the other just put the covering on. They were incredibly sincere in their motives; they wore the coverings because the Bible says women should cover their heads. I think they felt that they were actually reclaiming a corrupted symbol. I just remember being appalled.

Didn’t they realize that the covering was a step back? Didn’t they see how long it took our mothers and our grandmothers to escape out from under the coverings? Did they not see it as a symbol of the church’s long subjugation of women and their gifts? Did they not have the memory of mothers rooting through the covering drawer next to the church mailboxes because they forget theirs in the Sunday morning rush thereby rendering it useless as a spiritual symbol and only serving some legalistic definition of what it was to be a Mennonite woman? Ah … no.

I mean, those Muslim women aren’t wearing head scarves as a fashion accessory.  Geez.  They are wearing them because they are trying to be faithful to their religious teachings — which isn’t quite the same as “modesty.”  Honestly, they probably think Western women wearing headscarves are insane … why would anyone willingly put one on if they didn’t have to feel religiously compelled to. Which is how I felt about those coverings.