Givenchy Couture Embraces Mid-Eastern Influences, While In Sudan, Women Are Flogged for Wearing Pants

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As a followup to the extensive comments left about my article While the World Debates Burqas, Fashion Designers Show Beautiful Abayas at Paris’s George V Hotel, I want to report that Pixie, our most prolific article commentator and author of the blog I Love Hishma, and I are communicating about how to leverage her voice into Anne of Carversville, given her very busy schedule.

In my exchanges with Pixie and reading other comments, especially Noor’s — a former Jewess from Wisc., now a hijab-wearing, Muslim woman — I’m clear that like most issues in life, the subject of burqas and dress for Muslim women is lodged in grey matter.

To read that some Western Muslim women are dressing more conservatively than their husbands and/or husband’s family wishes or advises, underscores the fact that some Muslim women are choosing their preferred dress. I haven’t fully considered the ramifications of this fact as it applies to my own position on burqas, but I’m clear the no one is twisting Pixie’s and Noor’s arms, regarding their street attire. I believe this can be said for each of the Muslim women commentators on this topic.

Luxist, is the LAST place I’d expect to see this subject under discussion, yet it is. Kristin Young features an oversized photo from Givenchy’s recent couture collection. I’ve pulled another for us at Style.com:

Givenchy Fall 2009 Couture Collection

Luxist isn’t known for concerning itself with women’s issues, and yet Kristen correctly, I think, called out the fact that AP reported that Sudan arrested 13 women for wearing trousers in public and flogged 10 of them.

The 10 women who pled guilty were flogged at once.

Journalist Lubna Ahmed Hussein was among the women, who were arrested in a raid on the capital in Khartoum.

I just checked her Twitter account, and it is blank — wiped out.

Hussein said, “This is retribution to thousands of girls who are facing flogging for the last 20 years because of wearing trousers,” reported MSNBC. “They prefer to remain silent.”

Lubna’s boldness goes far beyond confronting Sudanese authorities. ANHRI, Arab Network for Human Rights Information, has expressed deep concern about the case.

The journalist has printed invitation cards to her trial and sent them to all media and press bodies. In case of being convicted, Lubna intends to send similar invitations for media to attend her public whipping.

Logging onto The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the ticker reads that protest are being waged this afternoon, by other journalists in support of Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein Hussein.

Reading further on this topic, Lubna Ahmed Hussein’s own explanation of the larger issues around the case are very important.

The flogging leaves scars (think African Americans who were whipped in America).

Flogging constitutes a ‘social execution’ for females and their families.  Lubna says that the girls becomes outcasts, ‘branded’ as ‘loose’ women, and not girls who were flogged for wearing pants. As Westerners reading about the story, there is more involved here than being flogged for wearing a pair of trousers.

You may recall that a young woman was recently flogged in Pakistan and the footage made its way out of Pakistan to YouTube.

Woman Publicly Flogged in Pakistan

Anne

Please join our conversation — because I really am ambivalent about what is an appropriate position for an American woman to take on the topic of dress.

President Obama says that burqas and all that go with it are none of our business. President Sarkozy says ‘no’; it’s very much our business.  What do you think? Anne