I'm fascinated by burkas. What their purpose is, what it's like wearing one, women who're forced into them, the controversies they cause.Personally, I can't see the point of them at all. They just seem to be extremely impractical and cumbersome, making every daily activity more difficult, including communicating with other people.
Of course for those who believe in male dominance that's exactly the intention - to hamper women and stop them being too adventurous or independent. And to stop them inflaming male lust with their provocative female bodies.
Isn't it odd that there's no equivalent female lust that requires men also to hide behind decency-preserving burkas? How come the blokes are exempt?
But it must be a very weird experience being permanently shrouded from head to toe with nothing visible but your eyes. Rather than something to be appreciated and enjoyed, your body becomes a mere object, just a mechanism to do things with.
Burkas have stirred up plenty of controversy. The French object to them as conspicuous religious symbols in a highly secular society. One British government minister finds it disconcerting to talk to someone so depersonalised and anonymised, nothing but a voice and a pair of eyes.
Many feminists loathe burkas as blatant instruments of oppression, preventing women from being themselves and turning them into cocooned chattels.
Some wearers though deny this and maintain they find their burkas liberating, a way of preserving their privacy and modesty and not being seen first and foremost as male eye-candy.
I have to admit I just find them absurd and ridiculous, relics of a bygone age as quaint as Victorian bathing costumes and whalebone corsets.
Pic: Fiona, Rita, Mavis and Sharon (or was it Fatima, Tasneem....)
