Regional attire…passing judgment

Over the course of our travels, we are seeing a lot of the regional costumes. As I type this, I am sitting at the airport in Malaysia waiting for my next flight. I observe the attire of people around me. There is the immediate reaction to some clothing….”that is strange-looking…” Well, of course it’s strange looking; I have never or rarely seen this or that before. In Malaysia, a lot of the men I have seen are wearing long white robes, a skull cap, and a white scarf binding their hair. The women have their hair completely covered under a tightly worn hood with a cape. I am waiting for the plane back to Delhi, and many of the men here are sikhs - - with black beards and their hair completely covered by turbans.

The situations that I find strange and “unacceptable” are when there are huge discrepancies between the men and women, with men dressed in mainstream garb and women dressed from some earlier century. On line at the ticket counter was a young man in jeans and a tee shirt, with a white skullcap and a short beard. His wife beside him was wearing a thick burka that covered her body loosely from head to toe, with slits for her eyes. I thought that this man could easily work at some multinational company; this woman could do nothing at all outside of her own community. Her attire so clearly marked her as not part of the mainstream. Add to that other components of that attire…such as the likelihood of baking when the temperature is over 100 degrees (which it will soon be, in Delhi) and just the physical restrictions to mobility.

So I have made “gender differences” my judgment measure for whether these different attires are “acceptable.” If the men of that culture/religion wear clothing that enables them to breathe, mix with others, and move easily, then I “disapprove” of their women’s attire that allows none of these. If the entire culture opts to wear clothes that set them apart and make them hot and uncomfortable (such as, for example, Chassidic Jews), then I am more willing to accept this as their own cultural clothing decision, since it is not ALSO a method to restrict and isolate the women. Not that any of these cultures would give a hoot about my assessments of their styles, clothing or otherwise…

Can I truly look at these attire-differences with a cool and anthropologically detached view? Let’s look at some western traditions, like women wearing absurdly high heels. I have never worn spiky high heels, but that has been more a function of my own lack of “competency” than choice….When I do see women that can pull it off, wearing spiky heels for a whole day or night without tripping or looking uncomfortable, I don’t “judge” them; I envy them; women in heels look classy and elegant to me. Now THERE is a real culture-biased statement on my part….since spiky heels are probably just as “gender restrictive” as many of these other garbs that I criticize…