Beware: Modesty in the News
Women’s bodies are a battleground - and the cult of female modesty is central to the armoury of those striking down women’s bodily freedom. Virtually every day, stories of the harms caused by the cult of female modesty feature in the news. Whether it’s the plight of women in Afghanistan and Iran, or the censorship of women’s bodies - along with the denial of their right to abortion - in the West, the notion that a woman’s value is predicated on her bodily modesty could not be more clear. Beneath you can find a select few examples.
#FreeTheNipple
In May 2022, Adidas launched a sports-bra campaign filled with twenty-five sets of non-sexualised bare breasts. In a statement to the Washington Post, the company defended their campaign, pointing out that it “was designed to show just how diverse breasts are, featuring different shapes and sizes that highlight why tailored support is paramount.” Some were up in arms. According to one American sociologist, “[t]hey are now trying to sell us objectification as if it’s liberation”. After complaints from the British public, the Advertising Standards Authority banned the advertisements.
Women’s bodies are, it seems, too offensive for public eyes. As The Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi rightly noted, “[u]nlike male chests, women’s breasts are still ridiculously sexualised – so much so that female nipples are censored on Instagram. Adidas’s ad might be a shameless attention grab, but anything that helps normalise nipples is OK with me”.
The Right to Roam
In November 2022, Women in the Afghanistan were banned from walking in the capital’s parks and from using the capital’s sports facilities, including swimming pools and gyms. As the BBC journalist, Yogita Limaye, poignantly wrote from Kabul: “Squeals of delight from young children fill the air as they enjoy the thrills of the Ferris wheel, bumper cars and a small rollercoaster at an amusement park in central Kabul. Their fathers sit on the rides with them, or look on, taking photos - rare moments of joy in Afghanistan where the news is often so bleak. But mothers are now denied the right to share in the memories the children here are making. Women are banned from visiting parks in Kabul by the hardline ruling Taliban”.
They don’t need no education
Having already removed girls from secondary schools, on 20 December 2022, the Afghan Higher Education Minister announced that the Taliban were now banning women from universities. The UN's Special Rapporteur to Afghanistan said it "deepens the erasure of women from Afghan society". In response to the exclusion of women from formal education, in August 2022 the activist Laila Basim co-founded an unofficial Women’s Library “to create a place where women can continue to learn”.
Woman, Life, Freedom
In December 2022, Time Magazine named the women of Iran their “heroes of 2022”. On 16 September, the 22-year old Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in police custody, after being arrested by the Morality Police. The wave of protests that has engulfed the country since is the latest in a long line, but as Azedah Moaveni writes, it is by far “the most sustained uprising in the 43-year history of the Islamic Republic”. By early December, at least 400 protestors had been killed, and, as Moaveni notes, “[t]he average age of arrested protesters is notably low—Iranian officials estimate as young as 15”. As Minoo Majidi said to her family before being shot dead by multiple bullets while out protesting: “If I don't go out and protest, who else will?".
The right to bare arms
In January 2023, lawmakers in Missouri voted to adopt a stricter dress code for women, after Ann Kelley proposed that women should wear jackets in the Missouri House of Representatives. Democrat Ashley Aune said “I’ve seen a lot of lack of decorum in this room in my two years here and not once has that lack of decorum spurred from someone’s blazer or lack thereof”. She asked: “Do you know what it feels like to have a bunch of men in this room looking at your top trying to determine if it's appropriate or not?”. As Peter Merideth said to the House, "I don't think I'm qualified to say what's appropriate or not appropriate for women and I think that is a really dangerous road for us all to go down." The Missouri house is composed of 116 men and 43 women.
Censored!
In January 2023, The Vagina Museum in London faced its most recent wave of censorship, with social media giants ruling that the content of their online blog posts - and even their logo - were “mature content”. The Vagina Museum responded publicly, noting that “anything pertaining to vaginas and vulvas is considered shameful, dirty, obscene and inherently sexual by many…We'd love to be able to reach out and talk with those making the decisions - perhaps invite them for a visit to start breaking down these taboos. But it's not possible to contact a human about the human problem. And so we do what we can, because we're not going to stop with our mission to educate, celebrate and provoke conversations about taboos. We do our best to survive in a world which would prefer these conversations were relegated to the metaphorical top shelf.”
Losing their Heads
In January 2023, Kabul shopkeepers were hastily covering the faces of the mannequins which graced their shop windows. The Taliban had ordered that they must be covered - or would otherwise be beheaded.
As Luke Whelan wrote in The Express, “the order was met with resistance as shop owners complained it would stop them from displaying their clothes or damage the expensive material bodies”. He added that while “[s]ome shops in Kabul are covering the mannequins with makeshift covers, such as plastic bags…others are attempting to spruce up their displays with elegant materials.”
