FotC's Biggest Fan and the Burqa Ban

I love Kristen Schaal as Mel on HBO's Flight of the Conchords. Pure genius. Here, she comments on Sarkozy's statements on the potential for a burqa ban to "free" Muslim women. There's not much room to get too complex in a short comedy segment --and I'm not a fan of the familiar overreliance on comparisons between "their" sartorial foibles and "ours"-- but the part when she eats a jar of mayonaise, slowly, is some kind of wonderful.

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STYLE ICON: Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry Bomb!

Los Angeles, July 1. Image from INF, via Jezebel, where the photo is much bigger.

Yeah, I'm kind of totally excited about the Runaways biopic. Each photograph that emerges with the cast in costume --like the above, with Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie-- is another wide-legged fist-pump in the air from me! (I also hear that the film will also deal with Joan Jett's queer sexuality, with reports of scenes filmed with Kristen and Dakota making out.)

Before the Runaways, there were other ladies-only rock bands who never had their stadium-sized success. But some of their records have recently been unearthed and re-released in small batches, including the first single EP from Suzi Quatro's garage band The Pleasure Seekers. "What A Way to Die," a sneering, snotty dismissal of boys in favor of beer, is pretty much the most bad-ass lady rock anthem of 1965 (and for some time after).

Party Time with Yinka Shonibare

Lucky for those of you in Jersey! On July 1, the Newark Museum will present a major site-specific installation by the acclaimed British artist Yinka Shonibare MBE called Party Time: Re-Imagine America to commemorate the museum's centennial. From Allison McCartney for the Newark Museum:

For the Newark Museum commission, Shonibare chose as his setting the mahogany-paneled dining room of the Ballantine House, built in 1885 for the prominent Newark brewing family, Jeannette and John Holme Ballantine, and part of the Newark Museum's campus since 1937. In this opulent interior, the artist has staged an imagined scene of a late 19th century dinner party midway through a multi-course feast.

Eight headless figures, dressed in period costume made from the artist's signature "Dutch wax" fabric, are seated around an elaborately set table as a servant appears bearing the main course, a large peacock served on a silver platter. The animated body language of the guests suggests a moment in which proper Victorian etiquette has begun to disintegrate, as an indulgent celebration of prosperity tips towards misbehavior and even debauchery. The scene references the rise of wealth and quest for refinement that accompanied industrialization in the United States, where the elaborate dinner party replaced the bare-minimum meal, becoming a celebratory "eating fest" for the social and economic ruling class.

Party Time is one of the Shonibare's most important works to date, reflecting the culmination of major themes that the artist has explored in his work for over a decade," observes Christa Clarke, the curator of Party Time and the Museum's Curator of the Arts of Africa and Senior Curator of the Arts of Africa and the Americas. "At its core, the installation considers the discrepancies of wealth generated by late-nineteenth-century enterprise, in which the material excesses and self-indulgence of a privileged few were made possible by the labor of others. His references to the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth in late 19th century America seem particularly relevant at this moment in time in the wake of our current economic collapse as a result of out-of-control spending."


For those who are interested, on June 30, curator Christa Clarke will engage Shonibare in a dialogue about the artistic process in developing Party Time and how this major sculptural installation relates to his larger body of work. The 7 pm discussion will be preceded by a reception in the Museum's Engelhard Court beginning at 6 pm, during which you will be able to preview the installation. The event is free and pre-registration is required.

While best experienced in person -- it's difficult to otherwise replicate the sensation of being drawn into the sensuous richness of his bright fabrics, while being distracted by the headless mannequins' arrested gestures of promised violence-- his tableaus presenting the perversions of colonialism are gorgeous and disturbing in any medium. For additional reading and viewing of his works, check out a great overview of Shonibare's 2008 exhibition at the James Cohan Gallery (NYC) called The Age of Reason, as well as his 2005 interview with BOMB Magazine. You can also watch and/or listen to him talk about his work at the Tate in 2004, and hell, read this just-published essay about him at TIME.




From the installation Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, 2002

Refusing Identification

At a time when civil liberties are being eroded and identity theft is rife, donning a hoodie or head scarf is about self- preservation; protecting that which we hold most precious. It’s about individuals refusing to be chipped and pinned, refusing to be beeped in and out of monitored spaces, refusing to be tracked by the all-seeing eye of CCTV. It amounts to a refusal of intrusive state control, a genius way to slip the net and go off grid. In this world of extreme self-exposure, the covered head allows us to cast ourselves in shadows of our own making. In the Post-Millennial era, we have come to exist, not in the bright glare of cameras but the comforting dark spaces in between.

From Nilgin Yusef, "Run For the Shadows," for Political Fashion (Image by Princess Hijab)

Frenchness, to the Exclusion of the Burqa

"Sarkozy's whole thing has been to capture votes from the National Front, the far-right French party," Scott says. "Anti-immigrant politics is a huge part of that. Sarkozy has taken this position all along that he is the champion of Frenchness. It plays well politically for him to find issues where he can declare himself the protector of French national identity."

From Michelle Goldberg, "Burqa Politics in France," from American Prospect, on French President Nicolas Sarkozy's statements to Parliament about a potential ban on the burqa


Other statistics might also help us understand why Sarkozy's words about Muslim women in burqas might be about something other than Muslim women's best interest. For example, although in France only 12% of the population is Muslim (due largely to migration from Muslim majority countries formerly colonized by France) 60-70% of those in prison are Muslim.

So now we have a bigger picture: Muslims as a "misbehaving" minority group, an ongoing war on terror and related distaste for all things Muslim, wide-spread discrimination against Muslims (1 in 3 Muslims in Europe have reported discrimination), desire to maintain a culturally homogeneous society, and, finally, a fascination with another man's progress. Put together, the something else is revealed: by highlighting the oppression of Muslim women Sarkozy is giving people in France more reasons to do what France is already doing pretty well-marginalizing its large Muslim minority.

From Aziza Ahmed, "White Head of State Seeks Muslim Women to...Save?" from Reality Check

WATCHING: Secondhand (Pepe)

I want to write about thrifting, both my personal history with thrifting (as war refugees, my family and I spent a good portion of our first decade in the United States in secondhand clothing) plus an analytic of thrifting (as, for instance, a much ballyhooed "recessionista" or "green recycling" consumption strategy). Meanwhile, I'm compiling some resources for teaching the transnational flows of secondhand clothing as both cultural capital and, well, plain ol' capital.

Most recently, I picked up a copy of a documentary, Secondhand (Pepe), described thusly: "Secondhand (Pepe) is a 24-minute tri-lingual documentary about the role of used clothing in diaspora cultures. Filmmakers Hanna Rose Shell [an assistant professor at MIT in Science and Technology Studies] and Vanessa Bertozzi [a Brooklyn-based documentarian working at Etsy] weave two narratives into a visual and sonic journey. The historical memoir of a Jewish immigrant rag picker intertwines with the present-day story of 'pepe – secondhand clothing that flows from the United States to Haiti. Secondhand (Pepe) animates the materiality of recycled clothes: their secret afterlives and the unspoken connections among people in an era of globalization."

I'm pretty excited to watch the entire documentary once Minh-Ha arrives for our intensive writing summer camp. Here is a short excerpt!

LINKAGE: Death Fat, Beth Ditto, and All Manner of Hijab

Fatshionista's Lesley expands upon her concept of death fat, her wry take on the "But what about your health?" hand-wringing that accompanies condemnations of fat (see the comments at any Fashionista post about Beth Ditto): "Ultimately, I employ death fat as a means of gently poking fun at strangers who would get all wrought up over their manufactured concerns about my health. If I had my choice, I’d much rather folks just pretend I don’t need them to instruct me on how unhealthy they think I must be."

And speaking of Beth Ditto, recent publicity about her collaboration with British department store Evan's --including a doll!-- has spawned some deep thoughts, including some worries about the potentially predatory circulation of her image-body as "fashion's magical fatty:" "My point is that the fashion world and its related media are trying to appropriate Beth but they don't really know what to do with her. They're trying to fit her into stale formats (crappy plus-size fashion) and, as Carrie Brownstein points out, they cannot get over their own projections of fatphobia."

Counterfeit Chic reports on the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority and its controversial policy on religious headgear: "Imagine being permitted to wear a religious symbol to work at your government job -- but only if your employer's logo were incorporated into it." Sikh men and Muslim women would be made to wear the MTA logo on their headgear in order to better identify them, according to the MTA, to customers. But as Counterfeit Chic asks, "Isn't the rest of the required uniform sufficient to convey the information that an individual is an MTA employee? Or is MTA really saying that the message sent by certain religious headwear is so loud (and scary) that it drowns out other sartorial signals and must be partially obscured by a governmental symbol?"

France, after banning headscarves in schools, considers banning any form of full hijab in the name of secularism. "If it were determined that wearing the burka is a submissive act, and that it is contrary to republican principles," government spokesman Luc Chatel said, "naturally parliament would have to drawn the necessary conclusions." State violence for your own good, seems to be the argument. President Nicolas Sarkozy, in an address to Parliament, called the burqa a "sign of subjugation, of the submission of women," and indicated that he would support a ban on the wearing of the garment. Will France once again shoulder this "white man's burden," and forcibly unveil women in an effort to mold them into a "appropriate" French feminine civic body? How might this be continuous with those historical statutes and sumptuary laws by European imperial powers that also legislated --and punished!-- the sartorial decisions of colonized populations, populations who (in the language of imperialism) required "civilizing" and "moral uplift"? Meanwhile, comments at Jezebel and Feministing are flying fast and furious with condemnations of the burqa and cheers for Sarkozy and, implicitly, for the state violence that would necessarily accompany a ban.

Meanwhile, France has also banned face masks at demonstrations and protests in order to deny protesters anonymity in their "threats to public order." Of course, this comes at a moment in which protesting Iranians are covering their faces to protect themselves from tear gas but also other forms of state retaliation. Sometimes being uncovered, being forced into visibility by the state and for state purposes (identification, surveillance, and discipline), is the real danger.

The communications studies group blog Cac.ophony muses upon the imaginative possibilities of hijab punk: "Ultimate Hijab Punk story to read: “Misli Midhib, Punk Rock Hijabi” by Cihan Kaan about a girl named Misli who is dropped down to the earth via a meteor and who covers her cosmic skin with a full hijab and performs Sufi whirls to disrupt the narratives of Muslim women."

On a related note, how about a flashback to Muslimah Media Watch on the French guerilla street artist and provocateur Princess Hijab, "who began her 'noble cause' of 'hijab-ising' advertisements in 2006. She does this by using spray paint and a black marker to cover women’s faces and bodies in ads, or by pasting 'hijab ad' posters everywhere she goes."

And finally, a bit of hijab humor (via Racialicious)-- "Talking to Someone Wearing a Headscarf: An Etiquette Guide. I like, "Attempt Assistance. Make sure you ask whether she was forced to wear the scarf. Don’t believe her if she says no, and make sure to tell her not to fear her older brother or the men in her family. If she mentions wearing the hijab is her own choice, do make sure you tell her she is still oppressed, even if she isn’t aware of it just yet. Offer to keep in touch if she ever needs support."