ZINAH

For Amaliah.com

Conscious Consumption: I Shop, Therefore I Am

The number of people within the Muslim communities loving fashion has visibly increased over the past decade. Modesty fashion is an ongoing movement that has been picked up online in the late 2008s. More young girls and women are using fashion as a means to demonstrate their Muslim identity. It’s something celebratory, having the freedom to express oneself through the means of fashion. What is concerning, however, is the increase of compulsive consumption.

Loving fashion somehow comes with the automated denotation of shopping. More particularly, accessible fashion. This, of course, should not be the case, fashion is not synonyms of shopping. But fashion can be both style and trend; one emboldens consumption while the other acclaims to be timeless. It’s between prioritising quality or quantity and mindfulness or senselessness. What is perceptible is that more people are driven by trend and seem to reinvent their style through it, without consciously knowing the effects of consumptive buying has on our planet and fellow human beings. The unfortunate truth is that fashion is aiming to be infinite, but our planet and the people making our garments aren’t.

Let’s briefly look at the supply chain of fast fashion (or fashion in general), organisations start with sourcing the raw materials, not many are done so ethically or in a sustainable manner. The next step is usually finding the cheapest labour possible, setting aside basic regulations such as health & safety, labour hours, well-being or any form of the union protecting the rights of garment makers. Then it’s usually overproducing products (according to recent statistics, Inditex group produces 7 billion products consumed only by 1 billion of the world’s population)…we know what happens to the products that are not purchased? Landfills full of products that are toxic and harmful to its neighbouring citizens. These end up being in far Asian countries in remote villages, many of us unaware of their existences.

The gap and distance between the initial production steps and the final products are so vast, that majority of people don’t have an oversight of what is happening (that is also true to the agriculture and meat industry). However, with the digital world and more active organisations exposing and sharing every step of the industry, we really have no excuse to oblivion. But then, the question of finance comes into place, the intention of high street fashion was to make fashion accessible to everyone, regardless of social class and income. One should be able to buy a stylish pair of shoes at £20 instead of breaking the bank at an artesian shoemaker. However, how many pair of those £20 shoes does one need? Is it worth the suffering of the planet and others for one to have that pair of shoes? Has anyone watched ‘The True Cost’ and saw the scene where a garment maker is begging the audience to stop buying products made out of their blood, tears and sufferings? Garment workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia and India have no choice of quitting the job if the work hours exceed 20, or the work environment causes them potential terminal illnesses (or even death, as the events of Rana Plaza showed) or have the privilege to find another job. Working there is survival, to feed oneself and take care of a family. It’s not the kind of poverty where being on government benefit is a back-up plan.

We as a Muslim community really have to build a conscious of everything we consume, the effect it had or has on the planet and our fellow human beings (and animals!). Thanks to organisations such as Eco Age and Fashion Revolution, big corporates are being held more responsible and regulations are being put into places to protect everyone involved in the industry, especially the garment workers. We encourage you to read and expand your knowledge on them. It allows everyone to make the right decisions of where to purchase and how often. Priorities quality over quantity, identify your personal style and stick with it. Invest in pieces that are ethical (perhaps more expensive) but have longevity. It certainly isn’t an easy task, but it’s something to be conscious of. Wearing clothes for modesty is a necessity, fashion is a luxury (yes all fashion, even those ‘trendy’ high street bargains). How one shops is a reflection of their identity, lifestyle, and mindset. Perhaps, some of us can’t comprehend that modesty is not limited to appearance, but how we are, who we are and how we treat everyone and everything around us.

Small Pleasures: Fashion’s Simple Pieces

When it comes to fashion, we often focus on the grandiose and lavish pieces that are theme focused. They bring us great pleasure but in the next season we are yet again seeking another form of very large pleasures from new ‘it items’. Our focus shifts from one trend to another, pursuing a temporary thrill provided by those fashion pieces or trends. But while doing so, we are overlooking the small pleasures in fashion. The pieces that have a staple silhouette, have historical connotations and were once pioneering during their inceptions. The very pieces that will always remain timeless, classic and essential.

We are talking about the white t-shirt, blue jeans, kitten heels, overcoat, turtleneck sweater, little black dress amongst many other iconic fashion articles. Clothing such as these build a foundation in our wardrobe and style. They come in different fabrics, finishing, textures and even animations. If only we pay more attention to them, we will notice that they can be accessorised in any form or shape to suit one’s personal style. Moreover, they can be dressed up or down, depending on the finishing touches. If the perfect shape and fit of these products have been mastered to one’s body figure, they can instantly look elegant and sophisticated. The tactile fabric can bring us comfort and confidence. They can be easily mixed and matched, whether through colour, textile or silhouette.

All we need to do is guide our gaze towards the small pleasures in our wardrobes and personal style. Imagine the simple combination of a cotton white t-shirt with blue washed denim jeans and a pair of kitten heel in ruby red? How effortless but chic? Doesn’t that just shift ones trendiness level just a little higher? Doesn’t the simplexes of it all just boost the confidence and spare time? This is just one of the examples, but the idea is really to gain joy and build a humble admiration to the simplest things in fashion. Decrease the protest of ‘not having enough’ fashionable clothing and be more mindful.

We encourage you look through your wardrobe and relish on the small pleasures of every piece you have. Have some excitement exploring the possibilities of styles your wardrobe can create.

(Photography by Ty Faruki)

New Year: A Transparent Wardrobe

How often have you read “New Year, New Me!” or something along the lines of refreshing your wardrobe? It’s great to have the motivation to refresh your wardrobe in a way befitting to you. But what’s more important is to invest in personal style with quality pieces that are also gentle to the planet.

Sustainability is not just limited to how our clothes are produced, but also who makes them, where they come from and how ecological their disposal will be.

Production:

Though some organisations are attempting to be more transparent on where they source raw materials and how they manufacture their products, many still keep consumers in the dark. Which makes it a little harder to identify who is doing their part for the environment.

Kering group is an advocate for sustainable fashion. Their business ethos is centered around an environmental friendly approach is not only limited to their garments, but also implemented into packaging, retail space and transportations. However, this doesn’t mean that all 14 brands under Kering are on the same path towards sustainability. The two top brands are Stella McCartney and Gucci, who do their part in eliminating the use of fur, exotic leather and a more ethically sourced raw material. Our advise would be to look more into the Kering Sustainability page where they discuss the collaboration between employees, suppliers and clients.

Of course there are independent and smaller brands taking a similar approach, such as People Tree, M&S and M.i.h Jeans. Certain high street names including but not limited to COS are doing their part by showing a more transparent supply chain.

Of course we are not suggesting that you should limit your purchases to the above names, but to reflect on what impact the pieces you purchase have on the environment. We are recommending to take a more sensible approach in investing in quality pieces that can have a long wardrobe life.

Labour:

We wonder about the people that make our clothes, we should care for their work environment and well being. We should support fair wages (living wages rather than minimum wage), sensible working hours and a safe work environment. After all, they are human just like us, our rights should be their rights.

For a very long time, the fashion industry (along with many textiles industries) have gone unnoticed (a politer way of saying remained ignorant) in terms of international regulations. Companies have misused not only raw materials and supplies but also human labour. Yes child labour has been abolished recently, but not soon enough, women still work excruciating hours and men are struggling to maintain a parallel of cheap and safe work environment. The unfortunate truth is that these things are not happening on our continent, but in far East Asia (Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, South East, to name a few)

To have a better understanding, we recommend you to watch ‘The True Cost’ on Netflix. A fashion documentary going into the depth of the environmental and labour cost of fashion, mainly low-priced fashion.

We should be asking the brands we purchase from ‘who made our clothes’, we should demand more transparency. Where there is no demand, there is no business. So the power to protect our fellow human citizens is in our hands. Fashion Revelution is an organisation that works towards a fairer human labour, from the people that make it to the people that wear it. We recommend you have a look and widen your understanding of the organization.

Afterlife:

Our natural instinct should be to donate, resell or recycle the clothes we no longer need. That requires making sure that it’s not done senselessly. Doing the above things to get rid of clothes shouldn’t be done for the sake of clearing out our wardrobe to once again fill them up with more. It can turn into a vicious endless cycle. We can minimise our wardrobe from quantity to quality. The documentary ‘Minimalism’ shows a beautiful insight of what it means to be a minimalist in our modern age. No there is no one cookie cutter formally, but various wonderful ways to be a minimalist.

We should put more thoughts into the pieces we purchase;

- do we need it?

- is it our style?

- is it sustainable?

- Will it last me?

Simple questions for every time you want to make a purchase, to decrease your influence on unsustainable fashion. Fashion should be both beautiful and kind. Let’s make it so.

Let’s do our part:

We can’t change the supply chain, nor where and how the raw materials are sourced. We can’t always know who is behind the manufacturing of our clothes but we can make sure to support those brands that are advocates for faire trade, labour and humanity. We can do our part by not consuming compulsively and recklessly. We can donate our clothes to people and non-profit organisations (note that doesn’t mean dumbing your clothes into the grounds of 3^rd world countries) or recycle them to be reused in manufacturing. We should get to know our style to an extend where we have the same wardrobe ideally for a half a decade or more. Though quality pieces come with a price (but fairer trade & ecological), they’re meant to be long lasting staple pieces.

So in the year of 2019 and beyond, we are hoping to be more mindful and conscious about the fashion decisions we make.

For Amaliah.com

Book Review: ‘Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution’ by Mona Eltahawy

I was meant to read this book as part of my master’s dissertation in 2016. Somehow, I didn’t have the heart to face what I assumed to be an anti-headscarf book. I completed my dissertation and didn’t have the courage to even open it once. Two years later, I went out of my way to purchase the book; consciously spontaneous but subconsciously always in my mind.

Reading books such as these requires courage, perceptual stability and emotional intelligence. Not for the horror unveiled within the book, but because as a prerequisite, the reader must have knowledge of the entire MENA region. An added bonus would be to understand global feminism, colonialism and the formation of the MENA region. But this isn’t a historical writing about the region; it’s an opinion-led short feature about Mona Eltahawy’s book ‘Headscarves and hymens: why the Middle East needs a sexual revolution’.

Mona Eltahawy is best known to be relatively a debateable journalist and feminist. Truthfully, before this book, I have not read her work, which allowed me to read the book without having any prejudgement of the writer. The writing is captivating, raw, brave and shocking. It uncovers really brutal aspects of misogyny in the Middle East and North Africa, including frequent sexual harassments, assaults, rape and murder of girls and women. The main focus seems to be Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where Eltahawy resided. It also includes case studies and incidences that occurring in Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan and Morocco; Kuwait, Jordan, Syria and Algeria (though these are brief). It is important to note that there are 23 countries included in the MENA region and only 12 have been mentioned in the book. Religious practices, laws and cultures are all too similar in the region. The content would not have been different if gleaning all 23 countries. Some of the cases are hard to digest, the vocabulary used are quite blunt and straight to the point. Eltahawy did not sugar-coat anything, words such as ‘fucked’, ‘raped’, ‘killed’ along with others, aren’t disguised in synonyms. Cases are exposed in their rawest forms, though somewhat connoted as common incidences in the region. They can be viewed as somewhat anecdotal and concentrated to make a point of misogynistic and patriarchal existence in MENA. Which stands true, unfortunately. You can sense the fury, antagonism and frustration of the writer.

To emphasise the pressing circumstance, the book presses on about similar issues and comes across a little repetitive. It reviews issues from different angles, ending with the same result; the governing bodies in the Middle East and North Africa are misogynistic and patriarchal. They hate women.

Furthermore, the book somehow insinuates that not only politics but also Islam and the clerics practicing it are the problems. They are behind the hijab, the social, political and cultural oppression of it all. Additionally, Mona Eltahawy observes the psychological subjugation of the headscarf placed on girls and women by their families. There is no denying that this does contribute to a larger picture of the truth, but they are not the sole factors of why women wear the hijab. We can’t overlook how misogyny is, unfortunately, a global issue.

The book certainly doesn’t compare MENA to the West nor does it want the backing of the West. She mentions this at the beginning of the book: “I am walking into a minefield. On one side stands a bigoted and racist Western right wing that is all too eager to hear critique of the region and of Islam that it can use against us…”. Brilliant, but does this look into the imprint the West had on the region? It looks at the symptoms of the problems and gives solutions of how to fight these symptoms. The causes or the roots of these rather tremendous matters are not mentioned. This would require the writer to look into colonialism, imperialism and postcolonial trauma. These topics are not a focal point for the writer, but this foundation would have been essential. Eltahaway fails to include postcolonial trauma, limiting perhaps not only her understanding but also the readers. This is not to say we should blame our problems on the West because that won’t stand true, nor will it help resolve anything.

Mona Eltahawy later touches on “on the other side stand those Western liberals who rightly condemn imperialism and yet are blind to the cultural imperialism they are performing when they silence critiques of misogyny.” However, is cultural imperialism limited to the Middle East and North Africa only? Or is she merely rewording religion as cultural imperialism? I don’t know, but we can’t blame religious interpretations by clerics on religion. As mentioned in the book, we need more female scholars, a reformation of religious texts and re-examine interpretations. Do these need to happen with aggressive demands, brutal protests and social turmoil? Apparently so, as reinvigorated by Eltahawy in her book. The Arab Spring has caused turbulence across the region, the most vulnerable in those societies (women and children) are suffering the greatest and sadly the changes necessitated by women are either overlooked or completely dismissed. Is the headscarf a problem that goes hand in hand with the oppression of women in the region? Not necessarily, it is not a legal requirement for women across the region to wear the headscarf (except Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain) and discrimination is not limited to only those wearing it, but also those who chose not to wear the headscarf. We can conclude that MENA has a problem with women, not the headscarf only. Though Eltahawy argues that the headscarf is the apex problem.

Sex is reserved for the last topic and only covered in one chapter. She believes that MENA needs a sexual revolution, where the importance of virginity outweighs the existence of women. How you may ask? Rape victims are forced into marrying their rapist or sent to a ‘rehabilitation centre’. These laws are barbaric to the least of description. Mona Eltahawy highlights women fighting to amend the laws that criminalise sexual assault and rape victims. Sex education needs school backing and enforcement, and parents need to be more involved in addressing taboos. Men must be rehabilitated in how to respect, value and see women as equals. Not sexual objects designed for their pleasure. Eltahawy mentions the Egyptian feminist Aalia Elmahdy, who posed nude on her blog & twitter, causing an uproar in Egypt. Understandably, there is a need for change regarding the laws and views of women. However, this doesn’t require women to pose nude or flaunt about their active sexual life. It’s a form of unwarranted provocation. As a matter of fact, neither men or women should parade an active sexual life; the act of intercourse is a private matter between you and your partner.

Overall the book unveils some truth in MENA and challenges its readers to understand the struggles facing women in the region. I presume the end goal is empathy, support and activism to change the world of women in MENA. However, like many of today’s feminists, Mona Eltahawy comes across aggressively passionate about the subject and gives the impression of being anti-hijab, anti-men and anti-culture (or religion per se). The inclusion of men in the text seems rather rare and small, like the white dot in the yin. Despite the mention of the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani who was enforcing women’s rights (sexual rights rather) in his work, Eltahawy makes a counter argument seeking the female equivalent of him. There is only one paragraph in this entire book pursuing the inclusion of men to stand side by side with women. I understand where this manifest antagonism comes from and it is entirely valid, however, reformation needs the inclusion of everyone in a society. We need a re-education of boys and girls, to grow up as equals. Not as different classes.

ZINAH

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