Fashion & feminism

Every chick flick movie is entitled to at least one montage sequence that shows the protagonist going through a “makeover” that usually consists of extensive shopping and beauty treatments. Everyone goes shopping, whether male of female but it’s known universally that women shop for fun, and sometimes, they consider shopping a stress reliever.

So what is it that makes women enjoy shopping? Is it the pleasure of buying clothes that will change how we look? Or is it the pleasure of just spending money? If you ask me, for a long time ago, shopping has turned from a process of attaining essential needs to a process that reinforces what Hilary Rander calls in her book, autonomous individualism. In her book Neo-Feminist Cinema, Rander attributes the autonomous individual to the woman who apprehends her pleasure for herself and whose health can be measured by the body’s capacity to experience itself as pleasurable. So shopping is now a way of proving one’s independence.

So, Do the female representations in media effect our own perception of power and being a feminist? Well, being surrounded, or suffocated, by the media that advocates for consumerism played a role in turning most women into neo-feminists. According to Rander, Neo-feminism means, “control over one’s body/face/self, accomplished through the right acquisitions can maximize one’s value at both work and home.” Although we might not be aware of it, we shop for the pleasure of having the power to choose what we want and how we look.

Although being a shopaholic in some way contradicts with one of many things that feminism stands for, that is liberating women from being sexualized in media, it seems that Neo-feminism has changed this view. Neo-feminism encourages consumerism and individualism, while on the other hand; feminism had always advocated for female solidarity and independence. So it is still possible to be a feminist and a shopaholic? 

"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.

Qatari Weddings

For this active blog, I chose to write about a traditional Qatari wedding I attended this weekend. The wedding was especially interesting because it had elements of tradition, but also introduced new concepts and broke through some cultural barriers.

Usually, Qatari weddings are segregated events. The males celebrate with the groom and his family in a “Majlis,” where they enjoy a variety of traditional dishes, desserts and endless supplies of tea and coffee. The males also preform a traditional dance with the swords, known as “Al 3ardah” to mark the marital celebration.

On the other hand, the females celebrate in a fancy hotel ballroom where they enjoy showing off their soiree dresses, taste in jewelry and beauty skills. Usually, the girls arrive wearing the traditional “abaya”, but once they are past the security check point and their smart phones are confiscated, they head to the nearest washroom to touch-up themselves and put away the abaya to reveal what’s underneath.

In the ballroom, one can expect to see catwalk of all the latest designer dresses and trends. Young girls, dolled up, gather with their girlfriends and strut their stuff. Meanwhile, older women are seated with their friends to enjoy some time together. This is every girl’s time to shine! Many mothers take this opportunity to scan the available bachelorettes for their sons, and the girls know it!

An array of beautiful, carefully selected flowers line the dance floor stage and
“Kosha” where the bride and groom will later be seated.

Another common trend seen in weddings is the presence of a male singer, who performs live, but is located in different room in the hotel. He sings traditional and new wedding songs that are simultaneously broadcasted into the ballroom. The girls take to the dance floor and perform.

One can argue, that weddings are the perfect opportunity for girls to demonstrate resistance through performance. They utilize this an opportunity to show their love for fashion and beauty. This is what one of the young girls attending the wedding had to say, “Weddings have become a fashion statement. Literally, girls will go all out and splurge so much to look good on this one night because they know everyone is watching and judging.” This is a perfect example of a situation where the performance takes place behind closed doors.

The wedding last weekend was different because the bride and groom entered the ballroom together and the groom stayed in the female-populated room for more than an hour. Although women are warned that a man is about to enter and do cover up, it was shocking that the groom stayed for that long. Also, a male band entered the ballroom and sang “Zafeh” songs to the bride. Some older women took to the stage and danced with them, while others showered them with 1 Qatari Riyal bills to request songs.

This scenario is not common in Qatari weddings, but with globalization and the modernization of the state, more and more girls are stepping out of their shell and trying to deviate from the parent culture.

Since the study of subcultures is usually dominated by men, making it difficult to find analysis on female interaction. This can be portrayed in the example of the wedding because all action takes place behind closed doors. Women tend to be more cautious in public, whereas they feel comfortable showing off their styles and dance moves in private spaces. Also, Ken Gelder argues that females are usually on the consumer end of the spectrum, and that can be seen in how they have created their own subcultures by adopting those that are more common and mainstream in the rest of the world, but not in theirs.


For obvious reasons, I couldn't take my phone or camera in to take pictures and therefore do not have any original photos to share.

Once Upon A Subculture

Throughout the years the subculture of hipsters has evolved significantly. There has been resistance from society towards hipsters and what they embody and represent. I associate hipsters with being totally against the mainstream and conventional ideas. The phrase “don’t trust the system,” reminds me of the hipster style since it seems that the subculture strongly value nature, originality and freedom beyond the confinements of society. The hipster subculture is a culture within the larger culture. They have their own set of beliefs, values and interests. The subculture discussed is at variance with the larger culture. It seems to me that hipsters are completely against the materialistic way of life and the obsession with consumerism. However, that has drastically changed as the subculture has been accepted and incorporated into the larger culture.

Recently, hipsters have been made apart of the mainstream and larger culture. Websites like Tumblr has helped incorporate the subculture into the larger society. It has become the norm and popular to dress and have similar beliefs which were originally that of hipsters. Is it ironic that a subculture that is built on a belief that is completely against society become incorporated into the mainstream? Are we all hipsters at heart? Has the incorporation of the hipster lifestyle abolish the hipster subculture? All these questions formulated in my head when the hipster incorporation took place. It was confusing seeing a subculture resisted by the masses becoming a trend. However, further reading suggested that the taking on of a subculture by the popular media is a frequent occurrence.

Hebdige brought up two ways in which this occurrence happened. The subcultural styles are incorporated into the mainstream culture by the commodity form and/or the ideological form. The commodity form is “the conversion of subcultures signs into mass-produced objects.” This implies that corporate companies use these subculture styles to create new trends. The ideological form is “the labeling and re-definition of deviant behavior by dominant groups.” The two forms can be applied to the diffusion of the hipster subculture into the popular media. Since culture is not fixed it can take on many different trends and continuously alter.

The Meaning of Style and Subcultures in Qatar

For this blog post, I decided to visit a mall and, using prior knowledge about subcultures in Qatar and building off of what we had discussed in sociology class, see if I could determine if people were part of a subculture from how they were dressing, and to also observe if, and how, mainstream fashion and commercialized commodity play a role in Qatar’s subcultures or the lack of them.

Focusing on Qatari women, it was initially hard to determine if a person was just attempting to express individuality, a shift towards a subculture, or just a slight deviance from the dominant culture. After a lot of slightly creepy staring and observation, I began to determine who might fall where. There were some girls with huge hipster glasses and dip-dyed hair peeking out from their sheila, and some with ombre fishtailed braids and galaxy printed leggings in the changing rooms. Others had on abayas with huge studs, or studded belts around their abayas, and bags with studs, and bracelets with studs, and shoes with studs and even headbands with studs. To me, these all seemed to be women who were pulled into the commodity form of a subculture, most likely that of the reemerging mainstreamed hipster or grunge, and not belonging to it at all and probably not knowing the origins of such stylistic choices. However, there was one woman that I saw who stood out (and I apologize that I have no photos of this as the woman was very conservative). One woman who I saw without her abaya, in the changing room of H&M, had on a pair of creepers, I have never seen them sold here so I doubt they are part of the mainstream culture or fashion in Qatar. She also had a lot of short pink and blue hair and chains, which I had never seen on a Qatari woman before, and, from my knowledge on such things, seemed very punk rock in the way she was talking and carrying herself. When recalling this incident to a friend, she told me “she must have been a boya”.

In such a conservative society, it is hard for many women to express their subcultural interests without being labeled as a boya (a tomboy), or being too weird or different, or bringing shame to the family name. From my time spent observing different people, I noticed that it is very important to look at the dominant culture when discussing or examining youth subcultures. To have a spectacular subculture in Qatar that creates ‘noise’ and interference in the orderly sequence and leads to deviation from the cultural norms would be looked down upon with great distain and would probably be legally impossible. The types of subcultures that we see out in the open in more liberal countries such as punks, goths, emos, cosplayers, and grunge are all represented externally by a specific style that defines them as being part of that subculture. In Qatar, these representations of subcultures still exist, but are harder to determine as if one is not fully submerged in the style of a subculture and only partaking in minimal attempts to symbolize their choice are they part of the subculture at all? There are few groups of people who consider themselves as punks, emos, goths or grunge, and yet their styles do not reflect that of the general subculture, as in Qatar, to dress in full representation would be socially unacceptable. In Qatar, it seems as though those who wish they belonged to a more stylistically expressive subculture and could publicly display this are out of luck.

The concept of the commodity form comes into play in this context, as most people who wish to represent a subculture in Qatar end up buying into the commercialized and mainstream forms of it and missing the entire concept of being a subculture. Very few people often succeed in remaining original, mostly by creating their own original clothing or adapting the mainstream fashions back to representing their subcultures in a way that is not part of the dominant culture. Dick Hebdige refers to this commodity form in “The Meaning of Style”, The Subcultures Reader, stating, “as soon as the original innovations which signify ‘subculture’ are translated into commodities and made generally available, they become ‘frozen’. Once removed from their private contexts… they become codified, made comprehensible, rendered at once public property and profitable merchandise.”

Another way of examining and defining the stylistic choices of many Qatari women can be to look at it from the ideological form. As mentioned by Hebdige, the ideological form is when the subcultural style becomes more accepted through the labeling and re-defining of deviant behavior by dominant groups such as the media or the police, through various forms of communication technology. In Qatar, the wearing of studs and spikes on almost every visible surface of an abaya would, in the past, be unheard of and would probably result in many upset mothers, however, now that it is just part of the new mainstream fashion, it seems to be very acceptable. According to Hebdige, “the media, as Stuart Hall has argued, not only record resistance, they ‘situate it within the dominant framework of meanings’ and those young people who choose to inhabit a spectacular youth culture are simultaneously returned, as they are represented on TV and in the newspapers, to the place where common sense would have them fit.” This alludes to the idea that there probably was a group of Qatari girls who did wear spikes in the beginning - for a purpose other than to be cool and fashionable and were probably trying to express their allegiance to a goth or metal subculture.

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.

Abayas In Qatar

The recent readings we had this time were so broad that it made it difficult to decide what to write about. However, words such hegemony, material culture and cultural relativism stood out to me when I started to apply those terms to real life situations here in Qatar. We are not passive when it comes to the media. We, humans, tend to critically analyze and interpret what we see, read and hear. In this case, abaya trends and fashion in Qatar emphasize this theory because most women here are using abayas as a way to resist and protest against the old traditional culture. At the same time, they’re conforming the culture by resisting western influence. In order to observe and have a better understanding, I decided to take a walk in Landmark Mall and observe abaya stores and women wearing abaya.

First of all, we should keep in mind that wearing an abaya is symbolic of the Qatari material culture. By material culture, I mean everything that is part of our construct within our physical environment, basically, anything that we can touch. While walking through an abaya store, I noticed how most women bought what was either advertised through the media outlets such as posters and magazines, or custom made abayas that had some touches of western fashion. This goes back to my point, women here are resisting the western influence, but simultaneously protesting against traditional and simple culture of wearing a black abaya. In other words, abayas have become a form of expression and cultural relativism.

Another factor I noticed was the ideology behind wearing an abaya. By ideology, I mean the system of concepts and relationships by accepting its causes and effects. In other words, wearing an abaya is embedded within the Qatari culture and society if you don’t wear it, you will be looked at as either foreign or just different. It seems to be part of the social norm to wear an abaya. From what I observed tonight, most young women in their teenage years were wearing fancy abayas, whereas older women were wearing more simple and elegant abayas.

Before walking out of Landmark Mall, I noticed a group of young women wearing fancy abayas with westernized designs that looked almost like dresses. In sociological terms, that could be a possible hegemony. Yes, women here are resisting western influence, but the West has already used its power to cause voluntary consent, as it seems the natural order of things. Some abaya wearers tend to wear the abaya just because of the societal norms and for the respect of the elderly. One of the girls i talked to said, "I only wear it cause of my father. I take off my abaya when i leave the country. I design most of my abayas from most fashion trends in Europe, i guess that is a way for me to express my taste in fashion." All in all, we should keep in mind that “Culture” is socially constructed.

Are You Gaga For Pop Culture?

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Lady GaGa. No introduction needed. Just hearing her name brings to any reader’s mind garish images of her outlandish fashion choices, “Raw meat anyone?” After your mind gets over those recollections you are probably also beginning to hear echoes of all her catchy hits in your ears. Well, having gone through that archive of memories you’re probably not going to be shocked that she has created a pop culture wave teeming with opportunities for so

ciological interpretations.

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Alone, she has created a massive subculture of what she calls her "Little Monsters". These loyal fans come take admiration up to the brink of worship (young people are prone to overdoing it with infatuations). This adoration is expressed outwardly through clothing, as many social phenomena tend to be. They show up to her concerts dressed like her and have every song memorized to the letter. When these fans, or "little monsters" attend Lady GaGa's events, they tend to mimic her way of dressing - which is, to say the least, eccentric and peculiar.

The way in which her fans dress can be seen as a cultural symbol, because it means that they belong to the same subculture which GaGa has created. Their fashion sense screams out "Hey! I'm a Little Monster too!" It is a symbol of rebellion and anti-conformity; an ironic notion since they are all uniform within the same subculture. However, individual fans persist on thinking that they are oh-so-daring just because people do not usually dress in this way.

For the subculture she created, dressing this way is a cultural norm. However, in the pre-GaGa days, which believe it or not was less than three years ago, it would be considered a negative sanction. Okay, maybe if you wore the things she wears now in the pre-GaGa days you won’t get punished, but people would definitely look at you weirdly and consider calling the local police to possibly send you to the looney bin.

Max Weber, who is a well-known and well-respected German sociologist, stated that people look up to prophets and philosophers because they have the power to influence people into behaving a certain way and thus creating a culture, or subculture. This is exactly what Lady GaGa’s fans have done, they look up to her and she herself, can be said to be a cultural symbol of freedom and resistance to dominant cultural values.