Your Eyes May be Too Sexy... in Saudi Arabia

It is often said that eyes are the window to the soul.

What happened if we had to hide them - our eyes, our souls, our selves?

Well, women in Saudi Arabia may have to.

Late last year, there was a push for women with "tempting eyes" to cover them.

In case you don't know, they already have nearly every other part of themselves covered. A young Saudi woman describes the clothing of Saudi women in this blogpost.

The blogger describes the different pieces of clothing (the abaya and the niqab) and their history (in relation to religion but also class) and the variations (black, earth tones, etc.) available for Saudi women.

She also discusses the reasoning for them originally and today: "to protect women from acts of disrespect."

Funny how that is done by hiding the women rather than educating or reprimanding the men...?

The Washington Post also discusses the issue of women and their freedom in relation to what they wear and how that affects their job and marriage options. That article even discusses whether women can have bangs or wear makeup!?!

As I sit here blogging, I am wearing makeup and rockin bangs with my face, arms and ankles fully exposed. Scandalous? Apparently it would be in Saudi Arabia.

But exposing your eyes scandalous? What is left to cover up? Are they just going to erase women from public life... just hold them captives in their own home???

The group that has the say so for whether that will happen and if women's eyes will in fact be covered up is the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. This article details what the committee has done and what they want to do regarding women's tempting eyes:

The CPVPV is Saudi’s Sharia, Islamic law, executive arm and was founded in 1940 to ensure Islamic laws are not broken in public, yet over the years, the committee has been largely criticized over its human rights violations.

In 2002, the committee refused to let female students out of their burning schools in Mecca for “not wearing the proper head cover,” which contributed to a large number of dead.

15 young girls died in the fire and dozens more were injured. The CPVPV men banned the firemen and policemen from accessing the girls as “it is not okay for girls to be seen without their full Islamic dress in front of strangers.”

Crazy.

BUT, that is their culture and religion and just because I don't want that, doesn't meant that they don't.

That is why I appreciated this approach from the Nude Revolutionary Blogger: she pushed not for doing away with their culture BUT to do away with the gender inequality. She called not for women to no longer wear the headscarf but for "men in the country to wear the headscarf in solidarity with women."

And what was the reaction...? She had to shut her page down because of so many complaints and threats. It seems the need to cover women's bodies is less about purity and more about power - power of men over women. 

I can't find anywhere listing the law as in effect so hopefully it never came to fruition. But still, the thought that this was/is an option to oppress women and literally hide them, their eyes, their souls, their selves is frightening.

Not to mention, how would they determine who had tempting eyes??? Yet another thing for women to feel insecure about - those with their eyes exposed in public have that freedom which is good but they would have that freedom with the knowledge that their eyes are ugly/unseductive.

Then, lets say they do have the pretty/seductive eyes, what do they do when their eyes are covered? How do they see? How do others recognize them? This comic presented the problem in a clever way:

Moral of the story: we are soooooooooooo lucky here to have all the freedoms we take for granted every day... even what we wear.

Also, we should pay attention to women around the world who don't have those freedoms. And we should do something about it... Here is the Nude Revolutionary's blog if you want to check it out!