Anorexia and the Veil

In my article on media influence on anorexia and the panoptic prison, I refer to anorexia and other eating disorders as possibly being, in part, the product of a particular type of control that appears to be intrinsic to western societies.

I'd like to look at this further by comparing eating disorders with other forms of control over women which are found in cultures and societies very different from our own.

I recently read a very good book - 'The Bookseller of Kabul' written by Asne Seierstad - relating life from a female perspective in Afghanistan.

The book contains many descriptions of how it actually feels to live inside a burqa - the extraordinary invisibility that a woman feels, and the terrible oppression of the weight and heat of the material itself.

Add to that the near impossibility of sight itself and you've virtually got a prison.

Muslims, and indeed, the Qua ran, assert that the veil, and the burqa, are designed to increase freedom, not limit it, by protecting them from the gaze of men, thus forcing men to view them in terms of their person hood rather than in terms of their beauty, or their sexual appeal.

This is interesting from the point of view of the gaze as referred to by Duncan in her discourse on the panoptic prison.

Indeed, Muslims do state that western women are imprisoned by the gaze of their male counterparts, and that this is exactly why they advocate the use of the burqa.

They claim that because western women are subject to such physical scrutiny that it is they, and not their Islamic counterparts, who are imprisoned.

From this viewpoint, the burqa could be seen as a place of safety, a refuge, rather than as a prison.

But can it really?

Having known the agony of an eating disorder, I can understand the solace that a complete covering of the body could provide.

I can't, however, believe that this is really the answer.

Some years ago, I studied anthropology. I conducted a study which involved a comparative analysis of eating disorders and a western and mediterranean society.

I conducted my research here in the UK and in Cyprus, and found that my hypothesis appeared to be correct - the incidence of anorexia and eating disorders was far less in Cyprus than that found in the UK.

I also found, however, that the overt level of patriarchal control in Cyprus was much higher than that found here.

Females, particularly in the traditional villages of Cyprus are very much under the control of their male relatives.

They are subject to a very strict honour-shame system which really means that a man's shame, or lack of it, depends, in part, on the actions of the female members of his family.

Intrinsic to this is the fact that their contact with men outside the family is controlled by the male members of the family, rather than by the females themselves.

This is exemplified in the tavernas, for example, where the men can be seen amongst the people, but the women are in the kitchen, out of sight.

It is also apparent in the fact that marriages are very often still arranged.

So - very few incidences of anorexia and other eating disorders, but a lot of patriarchal oppression that can actually be seen.

This led me at the time, as it leads me now, to wonder if the growing epidemic of anorexia and eating disorders has come about partly because these overt forms of patriarchal control have all but disappeared in western society.

Both the veil, and the social prescription of thinness as beauty are designed to alter the body in some way, and must both, therefore, be forms of control.

It would be easy perhaps, to think that because many women choose to wear the veil, and many also choose to starve themselves, that these are expressions of freedom.

A prisoner may well experience a feeling of freedom when he or she screams abuse at a prison officer, but he is still a prisoner.

True freedom cannot exist inside a structure which has been imposed on us by an external authority.

Neither freedom nor happiness can be found in the need to be invisible, or in the anorexics need to starve herself - which is tantamount to the same thing.

I think, therefore, that it is far more realistic to view the veil, and anorexia, as two sides of the same coin - as a reaction to patriarchal oppression, than as true expressions of a free self.