Brace for Boobquake
If Iranian prayer leader Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighiis is right, tomorrow will be a more intense Monday than usual. The Iranian leader explained his theory on earthquakes:
Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes
In response, blogger Jen McCreight proposed the idea of boobquake last week, and the idea has taken off. Her plan is to test the religious claim by organizing mass immodesty. As of this writing, the Facebook event has over 150,000 attendees planning to tempt the gods by wearing immodest clothing tomorrow.
Time for a Boobquake. On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts… With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.
This isn’t the first time that religious fundamentalists have proposed that natural disasters result from immorality. According to Pat Robertson, Haiti made a deal with the devil when they rebelled against their white masters, which led to the massively destructive earthquake there, and Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for legalized abortion and other evils. Robertson draws a daily audience of nearly 1,000,000 American viewers.
Boobquake has already been covered by major media outlets around the world, including CNN
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/22/blogger-show-cleavage-to-test-cleric%E2%80%99s-quake-theory/?hpt=T2
McCreight is scheduled to appear live on CNN and on Fox News tomorrow.
lol
just
lol
the comments on the link are precious
“I will certainly keep my eyes on this important story”
“I’m guessing the whole thing will be a big bust”
“Sounds like they’re milking this for all its worth”
This is a trite story Dave. Here is the better narrative: The paternalism of women veiled in religious tradition placing them in a inferior position by the demonization of their bodies. It’s a tool of oppression used by ancient social structures, like the veils in Islam.
I think that’s kind of the point of Boobquake, don’t you?
Western Christian society does the same thing. When I used to go to church camp, there were all sorts of dress code rules for the girls because the theory was that if they dressed a certain way, they would cause the boys to lust (lust=sin). In some families, this kind of thing becomes so oppressive that parents forbid their daughters from wearing shorts or swimming suits (unless they wear t-shirts over them). The American Taliban is a good description for some evangelical Christians out there.
I’ve got to take issue w/ the assertion that the veil is simply a relic of a paternalistic society. As shown by Leila Aboulela’s novel Minaret and recent street art by Princess Hijab, the Islamic veil has a liberating effect for many women who choose to wear them.
They are free from the male gaze and (yes, this is next part is fueled by patronymic systems of power) guilt from causing lust, though Aboulela focuses her attention on the freedom from a hyper-sexualized society.
Of course, this has nothing to do w/ the seeming idiotic statement made by the prayer leader. There’s no way immodesty caused earthquakes–that’s just silly.
I’m not familiar with that novel, but I have heard similar accounts from other Muslim women. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Muslim women with the option of wearing traditional garb could benefit from it, but I am highly skeptical. It seems obvious that for almost all Muslim women who do wear traditional clothing, it is far from a free will decision.
In an alternate universe where Muslim women had truly free will in this regard,
- the government would not imprison, beat, or punish them in any way
- no family members would seek to physically hurt or maim them
- nobody would discriminate against them on the street, at stores, or wherever
- nobody would prejudge them as immoral
- they would face no negative social or financial consequences of any sort
I find it very hard to believe that ANY would choose to wear this ( http://bit.ly/MvZIL ) instead of modern clothing like pants and a shirt, especially in 100+ degree weather.
I don’t think the opposite is true of the hyper-sexualized Western society. No doubt there are pressures (impinging on true free will) on many women to dress in certain ways. However, in an equivalent alternate universe where Western women were truly free to dress exactly as they wanted, I think many of them would still choose to wear short shorts and skirts, tank tops, etc.
So if you could possibly take away all the potentially oppressive social pressures in the Arab world, women would dress very differently. I doubt you could find a single burka out there. But if you could take away all the potentially oppressive social pressures in the Western world, I doubt any noticeable difference would occur. Maybe I am just being ethnocentric?
You’re being quite ethnocentric, sorry =/
Women dress whatever way they want because of the society. What would women wear without men judging? We don’t know, because that type of society really doesn’t exist.
As far as short skirts, blah blah, whatever, all of those are worn as a form of “showing” of colors to attract males. Women wear painful high heel shoes, painful thongs, annoying bras, just to look good for men who are judging our shape and size at every second. Unlike every other species, men choose the good looking women, and not the other way around, so girls have to dress up to show they are a good mate. We choose what makes us look “sexy” and attract a mate. Not what is comfortable. Not what we want to wear. But what is going to get us the guy. Whether we want to admit it or not, it’s down to science =/
So in the East, women are actually freed in some weird sense. I know it sounds crazy, but they aren’t being objectified by their boobs or butts. You can’t really objectify a burka. (Granted, the women are still seen as objects in general, but they can’t be sexually objectified if nothing sexual can be seen).
I guess to fight for burkalessness is asking for the freedom to wear whatever you want, while losing the freedom from being sexually objectified.
Men have a hard time understanding being sexualized whenever you want to live. I participate in college activities, and I realize someone is eyeing me up that I do not want to be even noticed by, or making passes, or refusing to leave me alone. Guys are more sexual creatures by nature, so they are more aggressive, and usually will make the pass, while women who are more sexually passive will not usually make the advance.
There are women in the church of Christ who think it’s ‘liberating’ to be free of the responsibility of leading any part of the service too. /eyebrow raised
I find it liberating as well. *wink wink nudge nudge*
Last summer, when the tornado nicked the downtown Lutheran steeple during the ECLA drama/debate about allowing LGBT pastors – good old John Piper, Baptist, said it was a sign from God – and some of the Lutherans agreed. There is no end in sight. tits4tornadoes is on my summer agenda.
@Nicole, you are comparing apples and oranges, I think.
I don’t deny that there are some social pressures on Western women, but it is nothing on the scale of the pressures on Arab women. The whole point of the thought experiment is to determine how much free will really exists. Obviously it isn’t 100% anywhere, but it is really close in the West and really far from it in burka world.
I think your comment doesn’t give women or society enough credit. I don’t think that attracting mates is the level of concern you give it, even in college world. You talk about “painful high heel shoes, painful thongs, [and] annoying bras,” and maybe some women wear those for mate attraction, but others wear them in completely non-mate-attraction situations. The point is, a woman who chooses to wear flats, regular panties, and a normal bra will probably not receive any noticeable negative feedback. If anybody notices (unlikely), the response would probably be undetectable. In fact, women are free to wear these things all the time, and those women get dates, get good grades, get good jobs, etc. They do not suffer any discrimination that is detectable. So the choice is there to a large extent, even if there are some minute pressures still in existence. I don’t think you are really arguing against the notion that Western women have the substantive free will to wear basically whatever they want.
In burka world, women who “choose” not to wear the burka risk death, acid in the face, physical beatings, and at the very least, severe moral judgment by many of their neighbors. They have been raised in a society that demonized women and especially women’s sexuality. I’ve seen American girls raised in this kind of toxic environment too – girls who “choose” to go swimming with a t-shirt and shorts on over a swimming suit. Is that really choice? Is that really free will? Not even close to the kind that most Western women enjoy.
There are inherent pressures, however. Men check out women, and do choose those that are inherently more attractive.
Maybe it’s the college aspect, but those who dress dumpy don’t get dates. How do I know that? I get hit on when I care what I look like. When I shlump down to the computer lab when I do now, I don’t get looked at. And I hear boys talking all the time, and other girls are quite scathing when they make fun of how other’s dress.
Maybe it’s a male thing where you don’t understand social pressures in a physical sense as much. That’s not supposed to sound mean. It’s a psychological thing.
When women enter adolescence, they have massive drop in selfesteem as well as positive body image. Men actually have a huge jump in self esteem and body image. As well, guys are not judged on a daily basis or physique, where if one looks at popular media, there are pressures in every image today for a women to feel thin. In psychological studies, men do NOT feel these negative pressures, while women actually do, often feeling great insecurities in the “public” aspect of their body, often feeling picked apart by other’s gazes and demeaned by public media. Some guys do feel this though, however, it’s much rarer. It’s quite common with women however, and I often feel this pressure on a daily basis. You feel awful when you don’t look good. And I have been made fun of for not looking my best. It’s pretty demeaning for someone to comment on you gaining the “freshmen fifteen” to even when you don’t feel like wearing make up one day.
I’m not a feminist, it’s just one teacher had to cover body distortion in my Adolescent Development class, and she basically had a crap ton of studies for this.
@Nicole, when I said “apples and oranges,” I was taking into account all of the things that you brought up. I’m not denying that there are inescapable social pressures in any society, I am just saying that some social pressures rise to the level of inhibiting free will while others may be merely a nuisance.
In college-world, the difference between you dressing up or going casual to the computer lab may be the difference between receiving positive flirtatious feedback or not. In burka-world, the difference between an Arab woman dressing in modern clothing may be the difference between her being beaten or having acid thrown in her face. That’s what I mean by apples and oranges.
Also, a lot of your psychological drama is limited to high school and college, which are not representative of society overall. Outside of college-world, just on the street or whatever, a woman who exercises her wide free will to dress in a variety of ways (from jeans and a t-shirt to a fancy dress) does not risk any real discrimination, violence, or moral judgment. Can you say the same for the Arab world that we are talking about?
I’ve got a point for both of you. First Nicole, it hurts my heart when you lay out a very good argument and then punctuate it with ‘I’m not a feminist.’ Honey, you probably are, and there’s nothing in God’s green earth wrong with it. It just means you want women to be treated as individuals like men already are. It doesn’t mean you’re a communist or a lesbian. Sandra Day O’Connor is a feminist.
David I think you’re oversimplifying your counterargument to the pressure to look good. It’s not just confined to high school and college; it might seem that way to you because nice cofC girls are Way Past Their Prime if they aren’t seriously dating by the end of college. It goes to the commodification of women by men. Men still judge each other by the looks of the women who are attached to them (never the other way around).
I invite you to peruse Dan Savage’s back archives of ‘Savage Love’–there was a letter writer a few months back who had a nice lovely thin acceptable girlfriend, who he regularly cheated on with a girl who was 50 pounds heavier, because he actually liked ‘fat’ girls, but couldn’t take the ribbing he would get for being in a relationship with one. Dan invited him to come out, to admit to who he is and what he likes and stop living the lie to his friends and whomever that this socially acceptable girl (for him) was doing it for him. That’s just one example, but stuff like that happens in our culture all the time–it’s why women are so hard on each other, why women are under constant pressure to look younger than they are, and why men really make emotionally stunted decisions about their relationships. It’s never just about love and sex; it’s also about money and status. We just have different rules about it than they do in ‘burka land.’
Neffs, I don’t think I am oversimplifying, it’s just a simple argument. Yes, there are some pressures to look good. More to the point, yes, there are some pressures to dress within certain boundaries. But no, the pressures to look decent in the West are nothing even remotely comparable to the pressures to remain hidden in the Arab world.
When I read most of the stuff that you and Nicole have said, I interpret it as agreement with the first two points above, but agreement that is phrased as if it is disagreement. That is confusing. But are you really disagreeing with the third point, the real point?
Do you think there is something valuable in the de-sexualization of the burka? Do you think that any reasonable woman exercising real free will (not tainted by threatening externalitites or oppressive doctrine) would actually choose to wear it? That’s where this whole thing started. I guess it is possible, but I am extremely skeptical of it.
Listen, I joke all the time that I want Garanimals for adults to wear to work. I know that isn’t anything like living in an oppressive regime and being forced to cover yourself, but they’re both copouts. They’re both relatively simple acts that you can cut thinking and time out of the process and just shut up and conform. And I can see where there are women who are following the letter of the law with the burka and wearing really fancy underwear and bright lipstick only for their own knowledge and in some really alternate-universe way, it’s a little empowering. I get the argument, despite the fact that I really can’t.
I think all I’m saying to you is that there’s a certain portion of the sexing-it-up argument that you can’t get, because you’re a guy. And that’s not fair blah dee blah dee gazepants, but there you go.
I didn’t feel any tremors yesterday. Hmmmmm.
France is considering banning burkas.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/06/23/france.burkas/index.html
@dmanes “apples and oranges” rofl
lol, I see what you did there.
like this