"Modern Abaya"

The culture and traditions of the Middle East are wildly different than they are in the west. Due to the majority of the Middle East being Muslim, the differences of cultural behaviors and social norms are drastic. Women in the Middle East are held under certain expectations that they’re anticipated to follow. The cultural “norm” of how a Middle Eastern woman dresses and acts is considered to be very conservative. We’re expected to be “covering” ourselves from head to toe when we’re out in public or are around men; that however is partly due to religion. Nevertheless in the Gulf, that is considered part of their tradition, and not just for religious purposes. In the Gulf women are expected to wear the Abaya. The Abaya is a loose black robe that covers the women from their neck down to their toes. The original purpose of the Abaya is to cover up the woman, and be loose enough in order to hide the shape of her body, and not attract attention to her.

In the media, Muslim Arab women are often portrayed as very conservative, veiled, and regularly, if they’re from the Gulf, wearing Abaya’s. However, what are also portrayed in the media are ideas of urbanization and modernization. In the recent years, due to the globalization and modernization theories, traditions and cultures in the Middle East are being thrown out the window. For the purposes of being “modern” and transitioning into urbanization, cultures and traditions that we once followed for essential reasons are being forgotten or drastically changed. The Abaya that was once supposed to serve the purpose of covering a woman up and concealing the shape of her body is now turned into a fashion statement. That may be due to the fact that the women here feel alienated from themselves. Marx’s theory of alienation helps us understand that. It basically states that due to the social structure and social class stratification enforced on us by society, we eventually begin to feel detached from our work, from our life activities, from ourselves, and from the people around us. We can use this theory and apply it to the situation here. Because the women are forced to wear the Abaya and look like every other woman around them, they’re beginning to feel invisible. They can’t express their personalities through fashion; they can’t stand out. This makes them feel alienated from themselves and from society, and I believe that this may be one of the reasons for the invention of the “modern Abaya”.

A variety of designers have turned the Abaya into beautifully designed dresses. I cannot deny that the art and thought put into designing those items of clothing is spectacular, but they’re not Abaya’s. Many new designers have come up with “modern Abaya” collections, a few Arab’s and a few westerners. The students of VCU in Qatar have come up with a project called the “Abaya Project” where they all contribute their beautiful designs of modern Abaya’s.

Here are some examples to demonstrate my explanations of today's modern Abaya.

The following video highlights a Modern Abaya Exhibition held in Katara’s Art Center here in Doha, displaying their beautiful designs.



I do agree that these new designs are very inventive, and can allow a woman to highlight her beauty whilst still being conservative. It allows them to express themselves and present their personalities through fashion. But going back to our original values, cultures and traditions, this is defying the purpose of the Abaya and hence defying our cultures and traditions.

Keffiyeh

This week, there was a discussion about the "abaya-as-fashion" movement in the Gulf and whether deviating from the norm of how the garment is worn could be considered a form of passive resistance to cultural mores. Our discussion got me thinking about another cultural item of clothing that experienced a similar development from national symbol to fashion trend:

The keffiyeh started out as a headdress worn by men in the Gulf region, Palestine, Syria and Jordan, before becoming a symbol of Palestinian nationalism in the 1960s with the start of the resistance movement within the country. It is an extremely vital aspect of material culture in an environment where two ideologies are constantly at battle with one another. 

In recent years, the message behind the scarf has been worn away through the process of globalization, a dissemination that has rendered the keffiyeh as a major trend in the West. Highbrow brands like Urban Outfitters have added it to (and removed it from) their collections. Although the craze has died down a bit, it is not uncommon now to see images like this:

In class, three questions were posed that were very relevant to this topic, the first being: is a single homogenous culture good? There probably wouldn’t be an Israeli-Palestinian conflict if the newer generations of youth all shared the same material and non-material culture. Would this turn the keffiyeh’s role in consumer culture into an act of union?

The second question was: does globalization increase ethnic and racial inequalities? In this case, the dissemination of the keffiyeh only serves to highlight the Palestinian struggle to retain their culture. It almost seems that because Palestine is no longer considered a geographical state, that their symbol of nationalism is no longer relevant as anything more than a capitalist fashion statement for hipsters.

The third question was: what happens when you try to resist globalization? In terms of identity, the Palestinian people are quite busy resisting many other things, but it seems that other people have been handling the keffiyeh situation for them. Some are casting the trend aside because of its exploitation of Palestinian culture, while others are calling it “hate-couture” and resisting it for its connotations of “terrorism” and “violence” – a rather ethnocentric interpretation of the scarf.

Much like the abaya in the “Immodest Modesty” reading, the keffiyeh has changed and continues to do so. But unlike the abaya, which started out as a traditional garment and became a form of passive resistance through fashion (or so it seems), the keffiyeh developed from a symbol of resistance into a fashionable way to be passive.

Deaf And Rich

Sociologists look at class and culture when they analyze society. Last week I began watching the show ‘Switched at Birth’. In my blog post, I will be discussing the overall plot of the show to give you a better understanding of what is going on. I will talk about how living and growing up in very different class cultures, created and shaped the two main characters’ (Bay and Daphne) personalities and even effected the two everyone around them. The show is set to portray the American culture and therefore contrasts the lifestyles between the highbrow, white, American family and the lowbrow, working-class, Mexican single mother who is trying to make enough money to give her daughter a normal life. The main idea is that the two girls were accidentally switched at the hospital and therefore lived lives that were not pre-destined for them.

The Mexican hairdresser raises Daphne, who is deaf. Daphne becomes accustomed to living a simple life of a poor girl in a beat down, not very safe neighborhood. She attends Carlton (a school for the deaf and is used to an environment very different from that of the hearing schools). Meanwhile, Bay is raised in the Kennish household. Her father is an ex baseball player and she attends Buckner Hall – one of the most prestigious schools in her area. Bay always feels like an outsider in her own home because she does not look like any of her family members, her interests are ones that her mother does not encourage, and her temper and sarcasm come from within her as opposed to something she picked up from her parents.

One day she decides to ask her parents for a DNA test to see if they are in fact related. The results come in negative and they all find out about the switch. From there, everything changes and Bay and Daphne and everyone involved needs to start adapting to their new lifestyle and complicated situation. For example, Daphne is now part of a hearing family and needs to keep up with reading lips because her parents have no clue about signing. Moreover, Daphne’s biological family and Bay start learning how to sign in order to make it easier to communicate with Daphne. You can see how the two cultures of the hearing and the hearing impaired come together and work towards better and easier communication through the use of language.

Born and raised in Qatar, I was socialized in an Egyptian/Palestinian home but outside, it was a whole different culture. My brothers and I attended private schools, which meant that we socialized with people of many different cultures – including locals. Because of my social experiences with my Qatari friends and classmates, I learned to speak Qatari fluently and began communicating with my friends in their language, which made it much easier for us to have better flowing conversations. We never really faced language barriers. However, you can see how I was the one who had to change and teach myself their language since I was the outsider living in their society, learning their language and traditions and cultures. Moreover, living in Qatar had influenced me to the extent that I actually got myself a Abaya made since it 'grew on me' and I grew a certain appreciation for it.

Abaya - A Fashion Statement

Butterfly, fold, and jumpsuit are three of the many names given to the designs of the modern Abaya. Originally, it was a cultural garment worn by women in the Middle East to cover up the shape of their body. In fact, women in the past did not have to wear it since most of them covered themselves up modestly. Today, in the Gulf countries in particular, the designs are constantly in change, depending on the trending world of fashion. Rather than having a loose black cloth, it now comes in various shapes and with multiple embroidery designs.


Since the clothing under will not show, girls tend to portray their fashion sense by the Abaya they are wearing. Not only is it a type of material culture that women use to cover up, but it also shapes the social relationships. I remember having a Syrian lady visiting us in Doha. She was shocked by how the Qatari girls wore the Abaya. It was a culture shock to her, as she was used to the plain loose black cloth, and not the multiple designs. However, since the material component is shaped in some way by the non-material culture, she has adapted to this trend as everyone else was following it, and is seen as a sign of modernization.

New designs are out everyday, ranging from very loose to very fit. Those designs come from other countries and act as a cultural diffusion. The neighboring countries influence us. Therefore, when there is an Abaya exhibition such as Heya or a fashion show, young designers from all over the Gulf countries would display their unique designs, and the Qatari girls would buy them. Here are a few abayas I bought from the Saudi section

The young girls here are attracted by each other’s unique Abaya designs. I was ordering popcorn before entering the movie at Villaggio, and I saw this girl wearing an Abaya that attracted my attention. So I went up to her and asked her where she got it tailored. She replied by saying that she had it made in one of the Abaya exhibitions held at Doha Exhibition Centre. I kindly asked her if I could take a picture of the Abaya in order to make the same. Here is how it looked like.

Not only is the influence regional, but is also Western in some way. For example, in one of the exhibitions, I saw a design that had studs on the shoulders, along with others that were “funky”. I kept thinking inside my head that I saw those designs on a dress a star was wearing, and now it is implemented on the Abaya. Lady Gaga acts as a major influence to all those girls that want their Abaya to be extra original. Also, recently young girls have their Abayas tailored in a way that it would look like a jumpsuit from the bottom, which is also influenced by the West. I have also seen girls that deliberately shortened their Abaya, and when I first saw it and asked them why, they would say that they wanted to show their heels off. I completely understand that it is a cultural norm, and those designs just keep getting updated by the day.