Oooh, Baby, Put it On: Ripping up Veil Fetish Art
by Racialicious special correspondent Fatemeh Fakhraie, originally published at Muslimah Media Watch
The original view of Middle Eastern/Muslim women was that of a lazily sensual harem woman reclining on a couch. Most recently, it has morphed into a cowed housewife bullied by her religion and the men in her life. From these icons arises a newer image of Muslim women: one that combines the two.
I’ll term this genre “veil fetish art,” because every featured woman has most or all of her face and hair covered. Although the woman herself is the main focus, the veil acts as a sexual catalyst: it brands the woman as forbidden, despite the fact that you may be able to see most of her naked body. So even though she’s exposed, the veil reminds you that she’s “forbidden fruit,” and pushes the viewer to want her even more.
So did I find these pictures while uploading porn? Nope. All I did was run a Google search for phrases like “Muslim women,” “burka,” and “veil,” and several not-safe-for-work results came up (FYI: moderate safe-search was on). The majority of these results came up within the first five pages. If you click on the pictures to find where they’re showcased, you’ll usually be taken to websites geared toward Islamophobic and xenophobic world views that fly under the flag of “anti-terrorism.” Or Islamophobic discussion threads. Or porn sites (sorry, no links for those).
Though it’s a possibility, these women are most likely not Middle Eastern or Muslim. It’s more likely that they’re white and/or western models with some spray-tans. The only thing that signifies their cultural or religious affiliation is a veil, which works in two ways: to brand the woman as a Middle Eastern/Muslim woman, and to arouse the viewer.
It’s something like an updated version of the French-Algerian colonialist postcards produced in the mid-nineteenth century. The primary difference is that the Orientalist postcards centered on domesticity, docility, and an exotic locale, aiming to showcase naïve young Algerian girls with their breasts exposed.
But the subjects of veil fetish art are neither girls nor innocent, and it doesn’t matter where they are: these women are hot under that niqab, and they want you to know it. They are positioned in pin-up posture: coy, curvy, and enticing. Or, they’re in a Maxim-style stance: they stare you down while your eyes roam over their partially-obscured form.
These women bear the “oppressive” niqab of their mothers, the badge of female Muslim submission to the Western world. But they also perform like their harem girl grandmothers, whose chests and hips protruded the same way over a hundred years ago. They are a combination of the silent and sensual, and they just want your attention.
So whose attention are they aiming for? Like I described earlier, the majority of websites that feature images like these usually carry heavy Islamophobic themes. Ironically, these outlets are often the same ones that call for the “liberation” of Muslim women while depicting these women in pornographic imagery. In these pictures, the veil adds a dimension of oppression that cries out for western male help: you can almost hear the women breathe, “Liberate me!” Take off her veil and get a prize…her body!
The type of liberation these images imply is a sexual one: erotic poses and come-hither eyes imply that this veiled woman just wants the freedom to be the dirty, dirty girl that she is. This simultaneously reinforces Orientalist ideas that Muslim women are oppressed (sexually as well as socially or religiously) and hypersexual. It also supports the idea that covering oneself is oppressive, and that the only way to be a liberated woman is to show some skin.
Taking into consideration the context of these images, it occurs that they might be a way to regain control over male egos bruised by a faltering war on terror and recent fears of women becoming suicide bombers. Since women in Afghanistan and Iraq are rejecting the faulty premises of women’s liberation that the Bush administration has been touting, the idea that Muslim women just want a (Western) knight in shining armor is dashed. And reducing a woman to a sex toy makes her a lot less scarier.
So…if you can’t beat ‘em, degrade ‘em!
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
john mccollum wrote:
I couldn’t agree more.
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 8:56 am ¶
Black Strawberry wrote:
Is it me or to these pictures seems a little disturbing. Something about seeing a woman’s half naked body but you cannot see her face is a little scary. I’m starting to see some theme in which if a woman is oppressed then she must be hypersexual.
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 10:25 am ¶
Aaminah wrote:
Thank you for this.
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 10:26 am ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
fatemeh, your last paragraph is incredibly important. boiling women down to sex objects always rears its ugly head when a society is threatened by their presence. the same can be said with regard to race (i.e. the sexual fetishizing of black men during the antebellum slavery days out of fear)
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 11:15 am ¶
nadia wrote:
“And reducing a woman to a sex toy makes her a lot less scarier.”
i’m so glad you wrote this post because it reminds me to start editing this paper i wrote about shirin neshat over a year ago. the sentance above totally made me think about how these images compare to neshat’s self-portraiture, and how neshat’s images make islam-hating men feel.
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 12:52 pm ¶
Laura Sheridan wrote:
I love that you’ve pointed out a myth that so many people believe in: “the idea that covering oneself is oppressive, and that the only way to be a liberated woman is to show some skin.” I would actually find it almost hilarious if it weren’t so serious. I think that this myth plays into the other thing I loved about your post “if you can’t beat ‘em degrade ‘em,” it’s so true – not only of women but of many other groups. I really enjoyed this post!
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 7:09 pm ¶
Amory wrote:
thanks so much for sharing this.
Black Strawberry:
“Is it me or to these pictures seems a little disturbing. Something about seeing a woman’s half naked body but you cannot see her face is a little scary. I’m starting to see some theme in which if a woman is oppressed then she must be hypersexual.”
I totally thought the same thing!
It’s in almost all porn I’ve ever seen.
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 9:47 pm ¶
Amory wrote:
Fatemeh–
Wow. I just ran a Google image search.
The filtered results are soooooo creepy!
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 9:50 pm ¶
Jaye wrote:
These images also remind me of a joke that I’ve seen recycled by a lot of American comedians, where they make fun of what Middle Eastern porn must be like, compared to the so liberal and free U.S. sexual imagery.
They imagine a Middle Eastern guy going, “Ooh, what a sexy ankle…”, or having a magazine centerfold which has a picture of a woman with an exposed knee. Yet, that’s what I see in some of these images. By Maxim standards, there’s nothing sexy about these pictures…but, here they are, for an American audience, used to bikini-clad magazine covers at the checkout stand. Wonder what that means?
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 11:44 pm ¶
angryyoungwoman wrote:
“It also supports the idea that covering oneself is oppressive, and that the only way to be a liberated woman is to show some skin.”
I wish more people would realize that a woman can be oppressed/liberated in a burka or in nothing at all. Clothing doesn’t create oppression or liberation. I can’t say it as well as you do, but I agree with you.
Also,
“Since women in Afghanistan and Iraq are rejecting the faulty premises of women’s liberation that the Bush administration has been touting, the idea that Muslim women just want a (Western) knight in shining armor is dashed.”
This is perfect. The Bush admin seemed to be saying to women in Iraq and Afghanistan, “we don’t like the way you are oppressed, come be oppressed the AMERICAN way.” Because it is so much better to be oppressed like American women than women in any other country.
Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 4:53 am ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
Back in October 2001, I found myself on a Greyhound bus going down I 95. As it happened, most of my fellow passengers were these 18 year old Marine Corps recruits – fresh out of boot camp – who had gone home on leave, and were returning to North Carolina to ship out to Afghanistan.
I remember distinctly one of these boys (who couldn’t have been older than 17) making the comment that “…they make their women cover up over there – we’re going to go over there and take their veils off”.
In his mind, this would somehow “liberate” these women (of course, I’m sure an Afghan woman would regard a foreign soldier removing her veil as an insult at best, or more likely as the prelude to being gangraped at gunpoint).
5 years on, I see some of the same thinking is still out there.
Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 7:53 am ¶
LeAnne wrote:
Great article. I will pass this around.
hairsmystory.com
Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 8:39 am ¶
Aaminah wrote:
“I remember distinctly one of these boys (who couldn’t have been older than 17) making the comment that “…they make their women cover up over there – we’re going to go over there and take their veils off”.
In his mind, this would somehow “liberate” these women (of course, I’m sure an Afghan woman would regard a foreign soldier removing her veil as an insult at best, or more likely as the prelude to being gangraped at gunpoint).”
LOL… good to know we went there to unveil the women. Not to find terrorists, not to deal with a humanitarian crisis, none of the fancy stories Bush has given us. It was really all about uncovering the women.
Thank you for sharing that Gregory, because we read it and say “that’s insane, no one would actually say such a thing” but you prove that real people really do believe and say it – you witnessed it in real life.
And as a Muslim woman (not Afghan) who wears hijab and face veil, yeah, ANYONE who would try to remove mine would be begging for an ass-kicking. Good luck explaining to your wife and the police how you came home busted up (and permanently unable to ever have a child) by a little woman in a dress (and probably bare feet, LOL)… A soldier, obviously, is far more threatening, but that doesn’t mean women are just going to throw off the cover to appease them or make it easy for them.
Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 11:16 am ¶
Colin wrote:
It’s always been so weird that there are so many reactionaries among us who think women wearing a lot of clothes are automatically oppressed, while these sympathizers in America decry not a few women here, especially young women of color as promiscuous wenches needing to cover up and stop degrading themselves and the like. No one else sees a double standard?
These reactionary faux-feminists need a swift kick in the arse.
Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 7:14 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
“This is perfect. The Bush administration seemed to be saying to women in iraq and afghanistan that….”
Does that mean Muslim fetishes are bad?
Posted 30 May 2008 at 2:00 pm ¶