Weave the sunlight in your hair

I was thinking over the holiday. (OK, that statement is rather self-evident, since I was working on my doctorate. It's meant colloquially.) My mother and I were discussing Islam - the burning topic of the moment, according to pretty much every news agency and television documentary - and she said that she can't see how a culture which forces women to cover their hair in public can claim not to be misogynistic. Fair enough, in some ways - I think this is a sticking point for many people with otherwise liberal views of Islam.

But how different is "Western culture" (an unfortunate term of convenience)? Forget if you will the well-known facts about the gender disparity in pay and employment, the far higher rates of domestic violence and sex crimes perpetrated against women than against men, and the unequal standards of beauty and attractiveness which apply to women in the media and the public eye (would a woman who looks like Andrew Marr, Jeremy Paxman or John Humphrys have reached anything like the status that these men have? Just look at Sophie Raworth, Moira Stewart, Anna Ford...) But even disregarding these challenges to the "emancipation" of women in the modern Western world, facts which even the least ardent feminist would agree are pretty damning, our society actually accepts discrimination between women and men as a normal, if not essential, part of life.

"Surely not!" I hear you cry. (No, I'm not hearing voices - it's a rhetorical technique). But think about it... What would happen if I walked down the street naked from the waist up? Flattery aside, I've no doubt I'd be arrested for public indecency. And what if a man did the same? Well, some women would no doubt swoon. Not me - I'm far too serious. But the point is that, in our society, we generally sexualise the female chest and not the male, and therefore insist on the former remaining hidden in public. What, then, is so different about a culture which sexualises female hair? There may be little biological difference between female and male hair, but equally there is little difference between female and male breast tissue. The hair is generally longer and more luxuriant, the breast tissue generally more enlarged and prominent. Why do we consider the insistence on covering the one to be oppressive, while covering the other is only normal and decent?

Now, I'm not advocating a cultural relativism which overlooks true oppression - violence, the denial of basic human rights, or anything of the sort. All I'm saying is that it's sometimes necessary to reevaluate what seems strange or offensive in another way of life.

Meanwhile, I guess we liberated Westerners are still waiting for the dawning of the Age of Aquarius...