Hotpants to Headscarves - the Gamut of Sexism in Women's Sport

Just as the Iranian women's soccer team was to begin a crucial Olympic qualifying match against Jordan, the team was dismissed by officials of FIFA, the international football association. Their fault? Headscarves. Apparently the tight headscarves the women wore to cover their hair violated FIFA's dress code. The ban was for safety reasons, a FIFA official went on to claim. Sufficiently gobsmacked, are you?

Women in Iran are mandated to cover their skin, almost entirely, and hair, in a strict interpretation of Shiite Islamic tenets. Consequently, female athletes have to adhere to this rule. Which they do. At the 11th Asian Karate Championship Games Iranian Karatekas - complete in their headscarves - bagged 1 gold and 2 silver medals. Iranian women have done the country proud in the fields of Karate and volleyball, while being noticeably absent from sports such as gymnastics and swimming.

In a country where women are already under constraints, a ruling such as FIFA's ban throttles the ambitions of women athletes looking to compete internationally. Exactly what did FIFA have in mind? Some sort of comeuppance against Ahmadinejad?

In another recent bizarre event fresh rules were mandated for women badminton players. To create a more "attractive presentation", the Badminton World Federation has decreed that women must wear skirts or dresses to play at the elite level. Such a dress code would make female players more feminine and appealing to fans and corporate sponsors. Right!

Did I miss a dress code memo for male players to enhance their attractiveness quotient? Male players, it seems, are required only to dress in "proper attire". No decree on how to sex up the men? No specs on shortness of the shorts, or the amount of hirsuteness allowed on legs and forearms?  Or, does BWF blithely assume that men don't need concern themselves with such frivolities? In their case, perhaps, fans come to watch pure, innate talent only?

Rangsikitpho, deputy president of BWF, has said that he is surprised at the criticism. "TV ratings are down. We want them to look nicer on the courts" and not compete in oversize shorts and long pants and appear "baggy, almost like men". Wonder if he ever thought of sharing his sartorial views with Kobe Bryant?

The fact that FIFA should be behaving like a sartorial bully would not come as a surprise when readers are reminded that its President, Sepp Blatter, septically blattered that women soccer players should wear tighter shorts to promote a "more female aesthetic". Holy guacamole!

Sepp dear, perhaps you would also consider handing a copy of Playboy with each ticket sold to a women's soccer match? Hotpants ain't going to come to your rescue, dinosaur. Go stand in one corner of the football field, and while you are there, cover your privates - some women players might just decide on goal practice.

Nevertheless, the moot point is that women's bodies and clothes are fair game for men to arbitrate and adjudicate over. The government of Nicholas Sarkozy banned hijabs on women in France. I blogged about it here.

While hijab is often viewed through the lens of repression, the fact is that it is often a function of upbringing, tradition, culture, and, further, can be a question of choice. My mother grew up on a farm in rural Punjab, went to a boarding school for girls with her six siblings, worked as a teacher and retired as a school Principal. She usually wears a salwar kameez with a chunni / dupatta thrown over the shoulders. This chunni serves to cover her head when the need arises - visiting a gurudwara, meeting an elderly (male) relative, protection against the sun. Her grandmother's chunni was a chador which she wore like a wrap, her mother's chunni always covered her head, her daughter's is usually thrown on one shoulder, her grand daughter's is worn in the fashion of a scarf - that is the evolving journey of the chunni. This evolution is also a testimony to the changing mores of society, each generation finessing that piece of garment.

However, if it was decreed that a chunni cannot serve to cover the head like a headscarf, my mother's heart would skip a beat. As would mine. In its multifarious self the chunni is linked to issues of propriety, comfort, styling choice, tradition. As is the veil, hijab, headscarf.

There is no denying that in several cultures women are forced to drown in billowing cloth cages with slits for eyes - that is repression, we all understand and denounce. However, the assumption that burqa / veil / chador equates repression is false.

Take the case of Hissa Hilal. As the BBC reported, from beneath a veil, the Saudi woman set her conservative Arab homeland alight. The journalist, wife and mother of four children competed in 2010 in the Arab version of American Idol - only here they compete to be the best poet in a reality television programme called The Million Poets. Dressed in a traditional abaya, with slits for eyes, she recited her poetry which condemned hard-line Muslim clerics calling them "vicious in voice, barbaric, angry and blind". Televised across the Arab world, Hissa's poetry touched a chord with the masses. Of course, there were those who voiced death threats against her.

In her interview with BBC Hissa explained the apparent contradiction between her advocacy of women's rights while wearing a full veil.

"Covering my face is not because I am afraid of people. We live in a tribal society and otherwise my husband, my brother will be criticised by other men."

While her poetry is intended for a wide audience, the act of covering herself, she says, is out of understanding for her male relatives.

"I know they love me and they support me. It's a big sacrifice for them in such a society to let me go to the TV and talk to the media. I am hoping my daughters won't have to cover their faces and they'll live a better life," she said.

If being fully clothed is a sign of repression then flipping the argument would suggest that scanty clothes aren't. Yet, women in the oldest profession wear revealing clothes to solicit clients. Are prostitutes not repressed?

The pressure to show skin is also a form of repression. In India the current craze to be seen in western dresses has sparked a contagion of otherwise sensible women choosing to dress against their body type. Since when has squeezing into a bandage dress become a symbol of freedom?

A Kiwi friend told me that when she moved from her home in New Zealand to work in neighbouring Australia she discovered that for a woman to be considered attractive, a show of cleavage was de rigeur. Having grown up on a farm in a gender-egalitarian society she was shocked. However, when in Rome do as the Romans, and she taught herself to lower the neckline inch by inch!

It sure is an upside down world when a woman can be faulted for both headscarf and hotpant, veil and cleavage. Take your pick woman - it is your blessed choice.

A writer, a President and two Nays

Two recent news in Indian media caught my eye: the banning of Rohinton Mistry’s book Such a Long Journey, and a probable cancellation of President Obama’s planned trip to the Golden Temple during his upcoming trip to India. The two engaged me perhaps because I am a writer and a Sikh, or because of the incongruous congruity between the two situations.

Mr. Mistry’s book was hastily banned after the Shiv Sena, a fundamentalist Hindu party headquartered in Mumbai, burned copies of the book in front of television cameras and threatened to burn the author too if he returned from Canada where he resides. Such a Long Journey was first published in 1992, won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, and has been a part of the literature syllabus of Mumbai university for four years. Meanwhile, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, "the President has decided, or the White House has decided, not to send the President to the Golden Temple because of concerns about him having to wear a headscarf."

Such a Long Journey was banned because it is apparently derogatory to the Shiv Sena and slights the Marathis. President Obama’s reluctance stems from the perception amongst some right wing Americans that he is Muslim, one that would be strengthened by his proposed visit that would necessitate him covering his head as per the traditions of the shrine. In both cases, the moot question is: is it a perception that can be corrected by denial?

Mr. Mistry has issued a statement denouncing the burning and banning of his book. President Obama and the White House have repeatedly reiterated the President’s Christian affiliation. What next?

In Mumbai people have organized readings from Mr. Mistry’s book, and uploaded video recordings on Youtube.  Discussions are being held on censorship, the idea of free speech and its constitutional guarantee. The only way to beat ignorance is by creating awareness. Public readings draw the attention of people to the book, who can read it and then judge for themselves. Something the twenty-year-old proponent of the ban chose not to do. It is easier to burn a book as your launch pad than read it and make sense of our conflicting reality.

            What is President Obama to do? A man of principles and courage, he came to power by fighting stereotypes. What cause withholds him then, as Mark Antony famously said, to continue the fight? Admittedly, as President he has to account for realpolitik. But the post of the most powerful man in the world also wields tremendous influence, influence that he must parlay in the battle against misplaced perceptions. 

Let’s begin with the Sikhs and their shrine. Sikhism emphasizes the equality of all human beings and rejects discrimination on the basis of caste, creed or gender. Sikh teachings stress individual hard work, community service and an optimistic view of life. India’s current Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is a Sikh. The Golden temple is the holiest shrine of the Sikhs. In the spirit of religious harmony, its foundation stone was laid in 1588 by a Muslim Sufi saint. Several notable people have visited the temple including Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, and the Dalai Lama. Most Sikh men wear a turban as part of their faith, which has led to them being mistakenly attacked as Muslims in the US.

President Obama’s visit to the Golden Temple is a chance to raise awareness that people who cover their heads are not all Muslim, backward, or violent.

Post 9/11 the headscarf has acquired demonic proportions. However, despite a widespread misconception in the West, the tradition of covering one’s head is an ancient one that was prevalent in cultures across the world. From the Egyptian Pharaohs to the Mayans of Central America to the European men of the Renaissance, the practice of wearing some form of headgear persisted over millennia. The same for women. The veil grew as a status symbol for high society Sassanian women and turbans were fashionable in Europe until the middle of twentieth century. As a neat solution for a bad hair day it was coined cache-miserie. Contemporary headwear is commonplace in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, South East Asia, and Africa – Sikh pagri, Turkish fez, Pashtun lungee, African turban or Jewish kippah – whether as accessory, instrument of faith, or as protection against dust and sun.

A covered head is a requisite mark of respect in many religious places – Sikh temples, Muslim mosques, Jewish synagogues. Even the Vatican requires that bared arms and legs be covered when visiting the premises.

            A headscarf is not suspect, the thinking that stereotypes it thus is. President Obama, this is your chance to bust the stereotype, and in the process, enlighten your countrymen.