Reading a little Scripture instead of a woman's magazine can make you feel better about how you look. No brainer? Here's more: A recent study of nearly 300 Jordanian teens and their moms suggests that religious belief itself insulates young women from the impact of media hype about the female form.
The study, conducted in the summer of 2009 by Dr. Teresa King and two of her students, surveyed students at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan, on their feelings about their bodies, from hair to feet, and compared their responses to those from students at Bridgewater State University near Boston, where King teaches. Both groups were also asked about their religious beliefs. The preliminary results show that the Jordanians, who were measurably more engaged with their faith, were also more satisfied with their shape. "In almost all nuances they reported feeling better about their appearance," King told me in an interview.
King and her students, Heidi Woofenden and Kaitlyn Baptista, presented their findings in New York at a conference titled "Hidden in Plain Sight: Pleasures, Policy and Politics of Muslim Women and Their Bodies," sponsored by the Muslim Women's Institute for Research and Development.
Religiosity and positive body image have been correlated in earlier studies. What made the Yarmouk University study remarkable is that, like most women in Jordan, those who participated in this study cover their hair and much of their skin whenever they leave the house.
Not that wearing a hijab -- the covering of women's bodies favored by many Muslims -- means students at Yarmouk cared less about media images of women. Like teens everywhere, the Jordanians rabidly consult television and magazines for information about how to look and dress at a higher rate, the researchers were surprised to find, than their American counterparts. But, said King, "for some reason they are not internalizing the media's message."
The study made no statistical link between the hijab and positive body image. Indeed, says King, "in America, we get the opposite ... The more you don't like your looks, the more you cover up" But one slide, citing one covered woman's gratified escape from the media's relentless attention to body size, suggested where attitudes about the hijab might be heading, especially as the practice moves West.
In a roundtable that preceded King's talk, the hijab dominated the discussion. None of the mostly Muslim teachers and activists in the room argued for or against covering women's bodies. The audience laughed when one young woman told how non-Muslims often assumed she was brainwashed because she was covered. The group nodded thoughtfully when a woman in a black turtleneck and slacks said Muslims assumed she was not a faithful Muslim because she wasn't in a hijab.
Instead, the participants in the roundtable agreed, all women's dress has to be understood in the context of the surrounding culture. Shqipe Malushi, who counsels both Middle Eastern women and U.S. military personnel on Islamic cultural issues, explained that she has no problem expressing herself while wearing an obligatory burka in Afghanistan, but feels imprisoned by traditional Muslim dress elsewhere. Modesty, said Malushi, should even be understood in the context of the person. Rebuked at a recent lecture by a man who wanted to know why she wasn't covered, Malushi said she replied, "How do you know I'm not?"
What this discussion of the hijab presumes is choice: In the United States, women can escape demands to cover themselves or demands not to, fashioning a new set of meanings for an ancient practice. Elif Kavakci, a fashion designer whose head covering was subtly spangled with sequins, grew up in Turkey, where traditional dress is heavily discouraged. Kavakci told the conference that she decided to cover herself at age 12, "because nobody was going to tell me what to do." After moving to Dallas as a young woman, Kavakci felt liberated to wear the hijab "as a personal act," she said. "People would ask if my hijab was religious or fashionable. It was both."
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This is Paul O'Donnell, the author of the article above. It's interesting what you say about eating habits, since what the researchers have yet to measure is how the Jordanians' eating habits, which remain more traditional than the media they consume, affects their body satisfaction.
There are many variables that go into a person's sense of self, in other words, and it's too easy an answer to say that hijab or any other spiritual practice or lifestyle has a certain meaning, especially as Western culture goes global and as people of different cultures go West.
Some of the women expressed that they feel comfortable in thier own cultural setting wearing what people of that culture are 'used to seeing'. In other words, a person would feel comforatable in a burkah if within that culture burkahs were an 'accepted dress'.
Eating habits also are cultural. So, people of an average weight and size on one country might be too heavy in another simply because burgers and chips are not affordable to most people, or are concidered luxury items.
I think, rather than calling the study flawed for those who simply want to have a justification to claim Islam is oppressive, or that hijab wearers are brain washed, we need to understand it's valid points.
Of course, if the media in my nation exploited women by having them posing half dressed over a sport car to sell it, I would suppose that is subjugation too.
You have to think...who decides what women look good in? You cant tell me that women designed heels and tight mini skirts, push up bras and the like. You mean women design things that torture themselves? We have been brain washed to think we need to fit into those things by men...no matter what culture you live in.
Women have historically mostly been considered for what they are to a man: something to get heirs upon, a possession that brings with it a connection to another family, tribe or nation for the purpose of ending warfare or expanding a sphere of power or influence, and more rarely and recently, a partner and equal.
When considering the first 2 conditions, it's in a males interest to ensure the heirs are HIS and therefor he will lock away his wife/wives to protect his genome and/or whatever gain he made by the fact of the marriage itself. Which goes a long way to explaining some early religion's difficulty in even accepting that women had 'souls' or were more than mere breeding stock with any rights unto themselves. From this arises man's insistence on the various degrees and methods used to judge modesty.
I also wonder about a man's inability to control himself just when exposed to a bit of flesh, what ever part of the body it may be.
Do women have to cover themselves so completely because certain men CAN'T control their baser urges?
Or are they so utterly possessive about a woman they can't accept anyone else even seeing her? Which means he fears other men not being able to control themselves, I guess...
If her behavior is always scrupulously faithful, what matter her clothing?
I've never gotten a satisfactory answer about that, given that it was men that wrote the definitions of modesty and pretty much all the religions out there...
Fav'd!
So what about the excess? Any animal will always breed past its optimal resources. There's even a name for it...See Dr. Malthus's theory.
And we've never been able to tell subsistence-level societies NOT to have as many kids as they can even if they have access to birth control.
So what's your solution to that problem?
a. they have learned to suspend belieft by becoming religious or
b. the very nature or religion requires people to believe something they want to be true rather than reality. Thus religion itself is a filtering mechanism.
This is a great example of the kind of willful distortion that occurs when a correlative study with unknown methodology and unknown conclusions is put forth in the popular press as 'proof' of something or the other--all for the sake of a five minute news cycle or to help some popular writer make a point. This cheap popularization of poorly presented research doesn't help us understand ourselves or each other, it just confuses the very issues it pretends to clarify.
It's not cool to flag this as abusive, I'm not being mean but I have a freaking right in my country to question religion. Respect it!
Is it or is it not true that a woman's testimony is only worth half that of a man's in court? Is it or is it not true that a wife is supposed to be obedient to her husband in Islam? Is it true that a woman cannot divorce in Islam as easily as a man? Is it or is it not true that Islam allows a husband to strike his wife as a punishment for being disobedient? Is it or is it not true that the Hadiths quote the prophet as saying women are in hell more frequently than men?
If it were just Arab culture, I could understand that but wherever Sharia law is practiced, whether Africa or Asia, these issues tend to pop up. If I'm wrong, please let's discuss it like adults. Enlighten me if these are not Islamic laws but are cultural ones instead. I double majored in Religion so I feel I have a good grasp of Islamic theology but I could be wrong, as could all of us.
Iran
Pakistan
Turkey
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Turkmenistan
Tadjikistan
Uzbekistan
Afghanistan
It's an interesting topic to me, actually, but I can't help but notice it's always *men* studying two different groups of women, and rarely women talking to *each other.*
Islam does not repress sexuality - on the contrary, it is encouraged as a means of bonding and strengthening the relationship, but within the bounds of marriage. A woman covering her beauty and only showing it to her husband is actually great for the relationship. She takes better care of herself at home, instead of only when she goes out, and both feel special.
There is also the fact that the more a women cover in a certain society the more sexualized it become. If you show an ankle to a man in Saudi Arabia I bet you he will become even slightly aroused and if you did the same thing in America they would not. In a perfect world the only way to completely desexualize ourselves would be to be completely naked at all times. There would be no sexual "curiosity" and therefor far less lust in our minds as well as crimes on the streets. This is why when you go to nude beaches/resorts all of the men do not harbour erections.
This can be backed up with statistics found here:
Nationmaster.com
Note: check the more liberal European countries are further down the list then many of the others. Australia may have prostitution but it is no where near as liberal as those in Europe.
But when they embrace and promote misogyny, homophobia and intolerance, they do make people look fat-headed.
Can I get an AMEN?
lol
Are you serious?
What next? Does My Religion make me look Phat?