The Complicated History of Headscarves

January 19, 2017 1:44 PM

The headscarf has been banned, made mandatory, hailed as a symbol of religious virtue, accepted as a means of controlling female sexuality, and politicized by governments and colonizers across the world. Manipulated and misinterpreted, it is seen as both a sign of liberation and imprisonment, of progress and regression. It’s a source of friction both outside and inside the communities that wear it.
posted by insectosaurus (21 comments total)

This is a fascinating article that touches on many aspects of the history of and present state of women's choices and obligations to cover their heads/hair. There's information about the headscarf in Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Nigerian and African-American traditions and about some of the present controveries (in France, parts of the Middle East, and more).
posted by insectosaurus at 1:49 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

I've worn a headscarf for years because I don't like "doing" my hair, but, I have also had my dreads tugged on by a nun in college which is rude and disturbing. I do think about what the perception of just wearing a head covering as a black woman and the mad history behind that just in america. While I might view it practical for my profession and my comfort level, no one has the right to impose their values on my head let alone by person and body, it's a madness really.
Thanks for sharing!
posted by reedcourtneyj at 2:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

I could read an article or three about each of these headcovering traditions individually. Thanks so much for this post!
posted by epj at 2:40 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've been reading some literature on the headscarf/veiling lately, and had some loose mental associations to parts of the article:

"The headscarf played a visible role during France’s colonization of Algeria, which started in 1830 and lasted until the mid-20th century. [...] "Arabs elude us because they conceal their women from our gaze," one general was quoted as saying. The haik became a focal point of the French effort: If they could conquer the veil, they could conquer the country."

-- ...reminded me of something I've read in Meyda Yeğenoğlu's Colonial Fantasies:
"The veil is associated with the fear of the Other, erecting as it does a barrier between the body of the Oriental woman and the Western gaze. By donning the veil the wearer has a surveillant gaze, frustrating the voyeuristic desire of the colonialist and displacing his surveillant eye, dispossessing him of his own gaze. Because the veil works as a kind of panopticon, a way for Islam to see out, while keeping outsiders from looking in, unveiling can clearly be understood as the colonial desire to reveal and control the colonised country, and the fetishising of the veil, this obsessive desire to lift the veil in the name of liberation is characterised by a desire to master control, and reshape the body of the subjects by making them visible."

And the paragraph about the 1979’s Iranian Revolution ("Iran’s morality police enforce the hijab with similar tactics, patrolling the streets to observe that women are wearing them the right way.") reminded me of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (obviously). I think with Persepolis many Western readers maybe were inclined to read it as an affirmation to their monolithic, reductionist understanding of an alien culture (veiling = always oppressive), whereas Satrapi stated herself that “an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists”. From this perspective, I read Persepolis more as a real-life companion piece to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Anyway, there's a lot to be said on that topic and this comment is long enough already. All I wanted to say originally is that the above is a good article indeed! Thanks for posting this, insectosaurus!
posted by bigendian at 2:43 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

Nice to read about the various traditions. No one ever mentions protection against ticks, head lice, or insect bites. Chances there are survival benefits to veiling, and head coverings, lost in the thicket of reason.
posted by Oyéah at 2:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

To say nothing of being freezing all the time. %)
posted by Melismata at 2:54 PM on January 19, 2017

Most poorer women in Europe wore hair coverings for utilitarian reasons well into the 1800s.
posted by Emma May Smith at 3:03 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

I wore a tichel when I lived in Israel in the 80's and for a while after I returned. I wasn't married and I wasn't Orthodox, though I was religious. I loved wearing it for a number of reasons, many of which were symbolic, but also because it was comfortable, I liked the way it looked and it protected my head from the sun in the Negev desert and in Los Angeles. The fact that it was also a signifier of my culture was only one aspect. I was actually thinking about wearing one for the Women's March on Saturday.

They are so beautiful now. In the 80's when I wore one, we didn't have so many styles to choose from - women have become so much more creative with their tichels!
posted by Sophie1 at 3:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

As a married (non-Orthodox) Jewish woman, I've been experimenting with wearing a tichel lately. With the rise in overt anti-Semitism, I've felt the need to make my Jewishness more pronounced. We don't go to shul, KidRuki never had a bat mitzvah, but when we learned about the service tomorrow night and Sixth and I, KidRuki and I both knew we had to go. Anyway, the tichel. Having this outward expression of Judaism gives me strength, I've found. I have an obviously Jewish last name, so I can't really pass, but the hatred makes me want to be more openly and unabashedly Jewish, because being scared means those fuckers win.
posted by Ruki at 3:31 PM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]

Unfortunately, wearing of the hijab is starting to get inflamed as an issue here in Australia. A nice image of two young girls wearing hijabs and waving Australian flags taken at last years' Australia day celebrations was used on a digital billboard to celebrate this year, but was removed after threats were made to the company displaying it. Hearteningly, a crowd funding campaign was started to put the image on billboards across Australia, and raised more than $120,000 in 24 hours and is now over $158,000. In a nice touch for 'Australia Day', a large part of the funds raised will also go to Indigenous groups. It is amazing how much fuss two young girls wearing something on their head can cause.
posted by drnick at 5:19 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

So interesting! Thanks for posting!
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 5:44 PM on January 19, 2017

Sometimes I love perusing the Wrapunzel website and social media accounts because their designs are so intricate and gorgeous! It makes me really wish that I could pull it off because they are so beautiful, really put focus on the face, and honestly? sometimes I don't want my nasty hair to be on display for the public. But I am not at all religious and feel like wearing one would be a form of cultural appropriation? But maybe secular women wearing headscarves would normalize it more? I'm conflicted. In any case, I loved reading about both the history and modern significance.
posted by joan_holloway at 6:05 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

You can wear a head scarf if you want. My nominally protestant but pretty secular Norwegian grandmother wore one in the 80s while doing her grocery shopping. It's not cultural appropriation if it's been common in so many cultures. Just don't imitate a specific style that another culture uses.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

This is a great read, though it barely scratched the surface of Jewish headcoverings (sheitel vs tichel are not the only option - especially when hats and now fascinators are out there - and tichels come in a variety of how-much-thair-do-you-want-to-cover options). I have yet to find a wrap that doesn't make me look like a cleaning lady, so when I need to put something on, I'm always Team Hat. But I love how they look on everyone else, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was also surprised there was no mention of the other big segment of headscarf wearers - women going through and recovering from chemo. I suspect it's a larger number in America than most of the other groups covered.

Still I loved the overview - and it gave me a reminder of a fun plot twist in the movie Arranged - I won't spoil it here, but it hinged on just how one of the characters tied her headcovering.
posted by Mchelly at 7:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

KidRuki and I are marching Saturday. I only had time to knit one pussyhat. I'm going to give that to the kid and use my wedding shawl as a tichel.
posted by Ruki at 7:14 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

"The veil is associated with the fear of the Other, erecting as it does a barrier between the body of the Oriental woman and the Western gaze. By donning the veil the wearer has a surveillant gaze, frustrating the voyeuristic desire of the colonialist and displacing his surveillant eye, dispossessing him of his own gaze. Because the veil works as a kind of panopticon, a way for Islam to see out, while keeping outsiders from looking in, unveiling can clearly be understood as the colonial desire to reveal and control the colonised country, and the fetishising of the veil, this obsessive desire to lift the veil in the name of liberation is characterised by a desire to master control, and reshape the body of the subjects by making them visible."

I don't really like how this viewpoint positions women's bodies as the symbol of Islam's purity. The flip side of this seems to imply that women who choose to embrace a more "Western" lifestyle and not wear a veil are (1) traitorous sluts for allowing themselves to be seen unveiled by western men and (2) at fault for negative western influence in their countries and the Muslim world in general.
posted by imalaowai at 10:43 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Just don't imitate a specific style that another culture uses.

Pishposh.
Go ahead and imitate whatever you want to. Knock yourself out.
posted by sour cream at 12:42 AM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

I don't really like how this viewpoint positions women's bodies as the symbol of Islam's purity. The flip side of this seems to imply that women who choose to embrace a more "Western" lifestyle and not wear a veil are (1) traitorous sluts for allowing themselves to be seen unveiled by western men and (2) at fault for negative western influence in their countries and the Muslim world in general.

The paragraph was describing a colonial/Orientalist perception of the veil, so of course the implication is not palatable.
posted by taskmaster at 3:38 AM on January 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

It occurred to me last night as I thought about this article, that another one of the reasons that I wore the tichel in Israel and beyond was because men were less likely to sexually harass/assault me when I was covering, so there's that. Interesting that I left that off...
posted by Sophie1 at 7:44 AM on January 20, 2017

Memory is so short. When I was a child in the 70's, everyone in my atheist family (of Jewish/Christian mixed background) wore headscarves. I was taught to wear one (or a hat) whenever I went out. Not in the city, where most of life was spent indoors, but definitely in the country. It was not about modesty, but about control and style at a time when daily showers where not a given and your daily routine would mess up your (long) hair. My sisters just cut off their hair. Before Kennedy famously didn't wear a hat, everyone, men and women, always covered their heads. And even after that, it took ages to change the convention. I've seen pictures of hippies totally naked apart from their headscarves.

Actually, it seems a lot of the fear of contemporary scarves comes from boomers who felt liberated when they let go of those scarves and hats. The "Hair"-generation. Now they don't understand how someone can feel empowered by wearing the scarf. And I get it because I'm between those generations. I get both views. I own about a gazillion scarves, but I rarely wear them. And when I am in countries or churches where the scarf is mandatory, my feelings are ambivalent. For me, there is a romance to the scarf, and a wonderful privacy, and I still prefer a scarf to a hat in a snowstorm. But sometimes, when the scarf becomes a symbol, I've learnt from the pros how to fix it at the back of my head and compliment it with bold makeup.
posted by mumimor at 3:11 PM on January 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

My nine-year-old wears a headscarf pretty much every day, right now. I think originally it was to deflect attention from her blond hair, and to feel less girly. Now I think she does it because she thinks that one march and three guitar lessons have turned her into Joan Baez. And because, as she says, the slight head compression just feels kinda good.

She gets comments in our mostly Jewish neighborhood, but nothing rude. People just look at her and then at me, and try to compute. They get nothin'. So then they just say that they like her scarf.

I look forward to sharing this post with her.
posted by pomegranate at 6:30 PM on January 22, 2017 [2 favorites]