veiled savannah

soulbanger:

this was the night before halloween, we went to munchies and it was effing nuts. mad crazy people coming in and causing havoc outside. mahwash and kinza were not safe from the weird ones.

Sooooo who wants to sublet my apartment so that I can go back to Africa and play with more kids?

I’m really trying to make this happen guys… this time, I’ll do 2 or 3 months. 6 weeks was NOT enough. But this entails raising a LOT of money, subletting my apartment for three months this summer, and already having an acceptance from a Grad school. I’ve got my work cut out for me :(

oooooooo I’m so excited for the next intern round table (why am I SUCH a nerd) :) :)

It’s about the NYT article by Nicholas Kristof. Here’s a link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?_r=1

Acha so, basically… the article mentioned something about Saudi Women “all covered in black cloaks and veils.” I read the piece aloud to my co-worker who is originally from Ohio but has been a true New Yorker since 2000. I appreciated her honesty so much when she told me that the initial reaction to seeing a women covering herself, especially being brought up in the midwest, is the thought of opression… these women are oppressed.

I tried my best to explain to her that it depends on the situation. A previous blog of mine discussed two different aspects of covering… one was forced, and one was forced to be taken off. Yes there are women who are forced to cover themselves. Yes its opression. But hijab and skinny jeans to me does not mean oppression. I just hope that when the Joe Shmo walking down the street sees a girl wearing a hijab… any kind of hijab, he realizes that she may have done that out of choice. She may have seen oppression from another aspect. Makeup, boys, fashion, hollywood, focusing so much on the way you look could have constituted as oppression to her. The hijab cleared her mind of all that crap. It wasn’t about the way you looked, how skinny you were, how much makeup you wear, the latest Marc Jacobs $1400 bag. It was about who you are without the materialism.

I hope Joe Shmo sees that.

We had to cut the conversation short… uff, work just got in the way :(

cheddabaked: you want to know something cool? and feministish? my costume looks badass as hell and i’m wearing a lady’s trench coat, your hijab, and women’s tights

So how do you empower women? What gains come from empowering women? Well a lot…

Working at MADRE, I’ve sort of absorbed a lot of that feminism that comes along with being surrounded by staff members who think, speak, breathe, and eat women’s human rights issues. I remember going into the internship thinking, I actually really don’t know much about women’s human rights… It never really sparked my interest. I was always into helping kids.

After a while, I realized that it isn’t the feminism coming out of me that makes me understand just how important women are in this world.

Each week we do a round table discussion in the office about human rights issues pertaining to women. Wednesday, for example, we talked about Liberia. A nation ravaged by war, only achieved an agreement to a peace settlement through the work of Women standing up for their rights and for the rights of their country. Their voices were heard and they pushed the leaders of the country to a peace settlement. Liberia now has Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, leading the nation of Liberia.

At the same time, however, an alarming rate of rape exists in Liberia. Girls aged 14 and younger have become targeted as rape victims (as young as 2 and 3). The statistics are shocking. On one end we have so much empowerment, and in the same country, on the other end, we have so much oppression.

I’m doing a lot of research on Kenya and girls who have faced female genital mutilation (which is not just prevalent in Kenya but other countries around the world). How do you empower a girl who has faced FGM for example? How do you empower a woman who has been raped?

I’m thinking of maybe starting an initiative to get female hygiene products, hygiene pamphlets/educational materials, HIV/AIDs educational materials, and other materials that could possibly empower these FGM victims. Let’s see how that goes… I have to write up a proposal for it and I’m still having a hard time starting it up. I know once I start I’ll start vomitting paragraphs :)

Oh and let me end on a sour note… I feel like all my efforts are only going to hit the surface. Its this whole sustainability and “changing centuries worth of a culture of FGM” that really only lets my efforts (girl with a B.A. from NYU) hit the very top film of the surface. ARGHHHHHH GET ME INTO GRAD SCHOOL.

Acha, khuda hafiz :) btw isn’t that such a nice picture? Okay seriously, Salaam Alaikum.

SO badass

soulbanger:

princess hijab is a graffiti artist. her motif: “hijabize” everything. every fashion ad (well, in paris… for now) showing a bunch of people in their underwear will be adjusted to show some… modesty.

well, as you can see there are still a bunch of legs and packages that are left uncovered. but she’s still getting her point across.

“I would say my work is inspired from the anti-consumerist movements. I’m an advertising hijabist. In other words, I cover all advertising with a black veil, which is a dark symbol, a reference on pop culture, and a way to hide elegantly advertising. It is also a study on territories and identities.”

interesting. quite an interesting girl. indeed. check more of her hijabizing here.

soulbanger:

ma’at