Rational
Dress
I don't know who invented high heels, but all
women owe him a lot.
Marilyn Monroe
In summer 2019 I spent
a week in Wiesbaden, working. I was helping to describe for auction a collection
of nineteenth century documents and correspondence originally sold off in the
1970s to pay the bills of declining and defunct Russian monasteries on Mont
Athos. In lunch breaks and evenings I
did my usual thing, strolling the city and taking in people and surroundings.
In a busy midday
pedestrianised shopping area a woman appears out of the crowd coming towards
me: tall, slender, dressed in an immaculately well-cut, dark blue and seemingly
brand new niqab. The man walking beside her is considerably shorter, hunched
over his smartphone, dressed according to regulations: a bit of stubble,
tee-shirt, jeans, and trainers. My rapid visual profiling doesn’t take in the
logo on the trainers so I don’t know if there is a brand he might favour.
The rules are sensible
which permit young men to dress in ways which are practical for life in any
European city. It means they can run after a bus, vault a barrier to cross a
road. They can pick up children with ease, put them on their shoulders and,
perhaps most importantly, kick a ball around.
I just wish the rules
were a bit more considerate about female dress. The niqab can look very
stylish; so too can high heels. But both are impractical. I guess the niqab can
be very hot inside on a climate warming summer day and that reminds me of how
on hot days in school, decades ago, we were always agitating for permission to
take off jackets and ties. More importantly, the niqab is isolating. I will
come to that.
I glance back at the
woman. She is staring at me, intensely, her eyes a perfect study in black and
white because those eyes are beautifully picked out with kohl. But I can’t
place the look as angry or friendly or just inquisitive - there is no facial
gesture to help out. I’m stumped to understand why I should be worth a very
frank stare. She has only her gaze to work with and I can’t interpret it. Maybe
it’s the fact that I’m wearing sunglasses that encourages a stare, since from
her point of view there is no eye contact and so she can’t figure out my gaze
either.
Then as we pass each
other, a penny drops and I laugh. I’m old and male and pale and I’m wearing a
Panama hat, a proper one with a broad black band. Hitherto I have understood
the Panama as standard issue for bald-headed elderly gentlemen on sunny days.
But I realise that on my stroll today I haven’t actually seen one. Maybe a
Panama is not a German thing, even for elderly bald-heads. Perhaps it’s like
this: she is my first niqab of the day and I am her first Panama. It’s the hat
which causes the stare.
People do sometimes
call out to me when I’m wearing a hat; there seems to be something about hats
(or at least, my hats) which frees people to address you. In the central park,
later the same day, a young woman sitting on a bench and making out with a boyfriend
calls after me, Bonjour, though I am
too slow to turn, lift my hat, incline my head, and reply - as one ought - Bonjour, Mam’selle. Anyway, it shows
that there’s at least one other person in this city who reckons a Panama
notable and, interestingly, French.
That brings me to the
point I skipped over. We are often led to believe that in modern urban
environments people walk around as if no one else exists, isolated monads who
don’t interact. That is not quite right. A lot goes on, an awful lot. I give an
example relevant to what I want to say.
If in the street a
child is behaving in a way which is charming, delightful or just funny, I will
almost certainly smile at whoever is doing the parenting. That is surely very
common, not an eccentricity. It is also the case that the parent will
acknowledge the compliment about the child which the smile implies - they will
smile back. Some who are more bold will end up exchanging a few words, not
quite “passing the time of day” but about things specific to the child, like
age or name. If I smile at a parent who happens to be wearing hijab, she will
smile back.
When women wearing
hijab began to appear at shop tills in London and then where I live, I behaved
at first in a correct but very restrained manner, as if attending a vicarage
tea-party. I didn’t engage, thinking it might be unwelcome. Now I will pass the
time of day, sometimes crack a joke, encouraged by the fact that there is
usually a smile on offer and even a riposte. It’s quite a good idea for old white
males in Panama hats to behave as if they might be ordinary human beings. We
can at least try to Pass.
The woman in the niqab
is pretty much excluded from the small change of everyday life. It really makes
a very big difference that you can’t see a face and from the face gauge whether
a compliment or a joke would be appreciated or has gone down well. Leave aside
that the man in tee-shirt, jeans, and trainers might not approve. Leave aside
that she is not going to initiate any exchange anyway. The face covering
inhibits any exchange. I suppose that is its purpose.
The exclusion is not
total: if there are women wearing hijab on the streets they do engage with
women wearing the niqab and vice versa (I’ve seen this on strolls elsewhere).
Perhaps the best hope for the future is that women who wear headscarves enable
women fully covered to change their style, at least for everyday street life.
Maybe the niqab would then become something reserved for special days, a
reminder of the past, like the traditional dress that jeans-and-trainers males
put on for formal occasions. It would cease to be a burdensome obligation of
everyday life. In the same way, though I can't understand why anyone would want
to wear impractical high heels for shopping or work - and most certainly should
not be obliged - it’s understandable that someone might want to wear them for
special occasions, even if they end up being kicked off and abandoned.
But there are more ways
of bringing on cultural change than imagined in my philosophy. In that same
lunch break stroll a five-abreast group of teenagers are coming towards me; in
the middle a tall, smiling, noisy girl has combined hijab with bright yellow
stiletto heels - or perhaps, vice versa.
This re-written version pasted in on 27 January 2023 replaces the original post. The substance is unchanged but the prose has been restyled.
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