Who's Repressed?

Nicholas Kristof is a widely respected New York Times columnist who apparently hasn’t got a clue about women’s clothing. In a recent Times column, “Saudis in Bikinis,” he makes much of the fact that Saudi women wear their bikinis at all-women pools and he calls them “foolish” for daring to suggest that extreme modesty can be attractive. This has provoked accusations of cultural insensitivity. (After all, as one reader pointed out, restrictions on the right to travel outside of Saudi Arabia are a more serious issue.) But I think the problem goes deeper: Kristof may be clueless about certain aspects of his own culture.

There's nothing shocking about that. Educated American guys are often oblivious to fashion -- its history, its theory and even its practice. This is a cross that chic urban females have learned to bear. Thank goodness we don't really dress for these guys! Women routinely dress for other women -- something Kristof does not seem to realize, although men have been complaining about this phenomenon for generations. Oh, the delicious irony of modest Saudi women wearing bikinis for each other -- perhaps Kristof doesn't know how satisfying that can be, how similar women can be even when different laws govern our lives. The female bonding that occurs as a result of sexual segregation and modest clothing is piquant, intriguing and familiar-sounding, even to a woman who grew up in a more open society.

I can remember wearing a pair of faded denim shorts and a midriff-baring T-shirt to celebrate the last day of school when I was 13 -- yet I now find myself identifying with women who cover themselves head to toe in black. The long, black abaya worn throughout Saudi Arabia has Kristof in a righteous snit. But my first thought, having outgrown pubescent grunge and moved on to more womanly concerns, is that black goes with everything and is easy to maintain. I have an entire closet of black outfits and accessories. When I cover my head, body, hands and feet in black, I feel as comfortable as I once felt in faded denim. So when I see another woman clad head to toe in another kind of black, I'm not that shocked. I'm curious about what we might have in common.

When Kristof refers to young Saudi women in their black outfits as "giggly black ghosts," I am reminded of my father who once complained that today's busy urban women "look like crows." It has taken years for my dad to get used to seeing me dressed in three shades -- and layers -- of black. There are cultural issues here. My father, who grew up in the tropical West Indies, favors bright, "natural" hues which look positively fluorescent to a northern daughter who grew up surrounded by snow and brick. This style choice is often fun but rarely elegant, as I keep trying to tell him, and no, I am not hiding in this black outfit, it actually makes me feel attractive, Dad. But we have agreed to disagree. If Kristof were not, himself, carrying so much political baggage, his critique of Saudi style would be as harmless as my dad's quip about urban crows who diet too much. But attacks on Middle Eastern lifestyle and clothing are increasingly seen to justify other kinds of attacks. And this is troubling.

Discussions about strict clothing regulations are often used to show that Arabs are strange and foreign. We see ourselves as freedom-loving Westerners who don't have to worry about being arrested over something as personal as a fashion statement. What is missing from almost every discussion about the veil, the abaya, the burkha and so forth, is a sense of humanity's history. Americans are naive about the history of clothing-related laws and customs. Most societies have had them, some are stricter than others, and traditional Arabs are by no means cultural freaks. Clothing codes -- not just the kind dictated by fashion editors or popular high school kids, but actual laws, regulations and policies -- are nothing new in the U.S. or elsewhere.

Right here, we have our own history of policing people -- gay people -- based on clothing. According to Martin Duberman, author of the gay memoir Cures, this was a serious problem as recently as the early 1960s, even in the gay bars of cosmopolitan New York: "You made sure to wear at least three pieces of clothing appropriate to your gender, otherwise you were subject to police harassment. They were able to arrest us on any number of vague charges, like loitering." New York City cops used this as a pretext to raid and close down gay bars "all the time," Duberman recalls. Many gay Americans, born in recent decades, don't even know this.

Laws change and so do customs. America's sumptuary laws and unwritten rules are not so different from those of other countries and periods. Western society is not and has never been as tolerant as we would like it to be. Instead of lecturing other people about their customs and their clothing, we should learn more about what we have in common with them.

Tracy Quan is the author of the novel Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl. Visit her website at www.tracyquan.net. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper executive editor, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.

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