Joyce Fegan: We can't let Afghan women's rights go out of fashion
Even as the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan, these brave women were gathering to demand their rights under the new regime in Kabul, on September 3. Picture: Wali Sabawoon/AP
For anyone who ever doubted the intentions of feminism, or who missed the point that women's rights were in fact human rights, we need look no further than Afghanistan right now.
There is not a voice outside of the Taliban suggesting that the current erosion of women's rights there is a good thing.
The cost of naked misogyny has been laid bare. So too is the fact that societies that mistreat women are less stable, both politically and economically.
The oppression of women doesn't just hurt women — it hurts all of us.
In 2001, when the Taliban was toppled in Afghanistan, the primary school enrolment of girls rose from exactly 0% to just above 80%. And infant mortality fell by half.
That's some serious data to measure what happens when misogyny gets toppled. Just as the oppression of women damages us all, its converse is also true. The elevation of women benefits us all.
This week it was announced that classrooms in Afghanistan will be gender-segregated and that Islamic dress, in the form of the hijab, is compulsory for girls and women in education.
But 2021 is not 2001. Afghan women have the internet, social media and smartphones at their disposal — something the Taliban and misogyny didn't have to contend with pre-2001, nor 20 years of the education of women and girls.
Cue the "Do Not Touch My Clothes" campaign by Afghan women this week.
The New York Met Gala was a bore in comparison to the colourful display put on by the women in Afghanistan this week.
Skirts in cerise pink coupled bordered by trims of cerulean blue, canary yellow head scarves hand embroidered with red and green silk threads and 1cm diameter mirror discs, cobalt-coloured cuffs circling poppy red embroidered spirals, floor-length gowns in rich turquoise-coloured silk, arsenic green shawls trimmed in gold — is how Afghan women dress.
Painted faces with arched, full brows, cascading chestnut and mahogany hair and gold and metallic shoes, some flat, some heeled — is how Afghan women dress.
This is Afghan culture. I am wearing a traditional Afghan dress. #AfghanistanCulture pic.twitter.com/DrRzgyXPvm
— Bahar Jalali بهار جلالی🇦🇫 🇵🇸 (@RoxanaBahar1) September 12, 2021
This social media protest, with the hashtag #DoNotTouchMyClothes began as a direct response to the Taliban's minister for higher education's announcement this week that women and girls were to wear islamic dress while in education.
While supermodels and millionaires, reality stars and actors walked the red carpet in New York this week, Afghan women were protesting a Taliban diktat one photo at a time.
The protest was sparked by Afghan historian Bahar Jalali — the founder of the first gender studies programme in Afghanistan.
"This is Afghan culture. I am wearing a traditional Afghan dress," tweeted the academic alongside a photo of herself in a green, red and gold embroidered dress.
The Taliban's image of women in head-to-toe all-black cloth, all of the time, stands in stark contrast to the flood of images shared by Afghan women, armed with a smartphone and aided by a WiFi connection, this week.
"We will not let our culture be appropriated by those who want to erase us," the historian added.
What also stands in stark contrast to the women of Afghanistan this week is the already mentioned Met Gala, the theme of which was "American independence".
Just a month since the Taliban took Kabul, which cued the American exodus from Afghanistan, there was but one, barely visible, mention of Afghanistan nor its women's plight on the Met Gala red carpet — an event considered the Oscars of fashion, a platform with an global audience captivated by powerful images.
The barely visible mention was a small pin, bearing both the American and Afghan flags, worn by the vice chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for US president — Huma Abedin.
Not that the red carpet didn't get a little political — there was the bridal type dress worn by progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez adorned with the graffiti-ed red message of "tax the rich."
A role model for those on the left, the attire, while provoking for republicans, wasn't that popular overall.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll from 2020, showed that a majority of American voters, 64%, support a wealth tax on the very rich.
Her message, at a $35,000 a ticket event, wasn't exactly what you'd call subversive. A small note to say, she did not pay for the ticket. Many New York City elected officials are invited as guests of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
The other protest outfit came from English model Cara Delevingne — who wore a white suit and breastplate with the words, also in red, "Peg the Patriarchy" written on top.
Designed by Dior, the outfit drew lots of commendation for Delevingne using the platform for good, but then things took a twist.
It turns out that "peg the patriarchy" is a trade-marked slogan (in Canada) coined by Luna Matatas — a queer woman of colour in Toronto.
She says she neither received credit, nor an offer to collaborate, from the brand or supermodel.
"When I realised the designer was Dior, I was like: 'Oh, God'," Ms Matatas said:
While Dior's and Delevingne's intentions were presumably good, if you want a real lesson in using fashion to subvert and to forward feminism, it's the women of Afghanistan that we've to look to.
How is it that those with the least power and the most to lose are leading the charge and showing those of us with so many freedoms the way forward?
It's been only a month since we were worried sick about the people, and women in particular of Afghanistan — but four weeks on what are we actually doing to ensure that they might one day have the freedoms we all take for granted?
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