Just a quick note -- The Daily Mail's Liz Jones dons a burqa for a week to register her "expert" opinion on "what it's like to wear a burqa," which both Muslimah Media Watch's Krista and Jezebel's Sadie promptly tear to bits. Of course, "identity tourism" and the resulting "revelations" constitute a familiar documentary genre, from John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me to Tyra Bank's fat suit on her reality show, in which a marginalized population's structured silence (having been denied access or capacity for "voice" in its multiple permutations, including the often racial or civilizational ascription of partial, and therefore disabled, selfhood) becomes the occasion for another's speech. From MMW:
All I can say to this is, no. No, you don't know how they feel (or at the very least, you can't say for certain that you do.) You don't know why they're wearing what they're wearing, or what meaning it has for them. Yes, some Muslim women feel marginalized and objectified, and sometimes this even relates to their clothing. Other women might wear exactly the same clothing and feel entirely different, or might even feel more marginalized and objectified by non-Muslims than by their "male relatives." Spending a week in a burqa (especially when this experience is entered into already with fear and disgust towards the burqa) does not make someone an expert on how women who wear these things feel, or on how they should react to racism and abuse.
