The Veil of Oppression?

Hair is the western woman’s veil

The west is fixated on Muslim veils, but all women’s hair is bound in ideals of femininity, and a source of male judgment

• • Arwa Mahdawi

• • theguardian.com, Friday 10 January 2014 15.23 GMT

Give me a head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining streamin’ steamin’
Flaxen waxen
Give me it down to there
Shoulder length or longer….
Here baby there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy..hair!
It’s certainly true that our ‘culture’ seems to worship hair, but not strictly for the sake of women’s beauty or a social trope that defines it…nope, as a sign of something, it is  one body ‘part’ we mostly share in common…so hardly a ‘veil’ which is a culturally mandated oppressive item, strictly for women, to cover what fundamentalist men are, apparently, driven crazy by.

In our culture, you can even be sexy without any hair at all (Yul Brynner, Telly Savallas, etc.) but usually only if you are a man.. although I can remember back in the 70’s that it was a bit of a trend for black women to have bald heads and wear big, fantastic earrings..they looked beautiful, amazing…

The length of our hair is not an issue, either as many of our iconic women have or had shorter hair..certainly political women, and celebs like Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, and for us old fossils, Elizabeth Taylor…didn’t let short hair get in their way..
I feel you’ve picked a poor example in your quest to be an apologist  for fundamentalist cultural blather.. and not just Muslims, either..there are many groups that insist on women keeping their heads covered, from conservative Jewish sects (where women shave their heads and then don wigs, go figure) to the Amish, Mennonites etc etc…all seem to suffer from the same issues of women being looked upon, and accepted, as evil temptresses..
Perhaps your next discourse could be a discussion of the way in which Muslim fundamentalist men keep women chained to the Stone Age…