Book Review: Pious Fashion

Pious Fashion:How Muslim Women Dressby Elizabeth BucarHarvard University Press, 2017The title of Elizabeth Bucar's book, Pious Fashion, refers to the hijabis worn by Muslim women all around the world. Bucar, a professor of philosophy and religion at Northeastern University, has made a study of the variations in style and commercial innovation that have arisen in various cultures regarding the hijab and the chador and the khimar and the abaya and the jilbab and the niqab and the burqa, in which every single inch of the woman's body is covered, including her eyes. Bucar has noted the rise of these clothing items as objects of fashion, noted the rise in variety and shopping venues, and she has interviewed a great many women who make “pious fashion” a part of their daily lives in Tehran, Istanbul, and Yogyakarta.“The women in this book are real people trying to express their religious beliefs and look good at the same time,” Bucar writes.This is a dangerously naive book. At every turn, in every possible way, the author attempts to use fashion to paper over fascism, and she remains blind and deaf not only to the subtext but to the actual text of things as well.She relates the sentiments of a woman named Zahra, for instance, who has interesting things to say about the regional differences of hijab fashion – interesting enough, in any case, to draw Bucar's attention away from the important thing being said:

When I traveled outside Tehran, it became clear that hijab looked very different in different regions, whether south of the capital in Qom, where the majority of women wore chador, or in the north, where it was possible to wear a blouse or a tunic in lieu of a manteau. Dress norms are tied so closely to location that Tehran-born Zahra pointed out that traveling from one place to another temporarily suspends these norms. “During road trips, because you're far away from formal settings or maybe because you are traveling, wearing more comfortable clothes wouldn't cause any trouble.” She confirmed that she would “step down” her hijab while traveling, opting for a casual long tunic instead of a buttoned-up manteau ...

In another instance, she talks to a woman in Istanbul who puts a good deal of creativity into her collection of head scarves:

“Everyone owns at least thirty,” Hande said. “The number depends on how long you have been wearing and collecting them.” “It's such an easy gift,” Mine offered. “There is no size, and since you can't go about without a scarf, you will eventually use it.”

Over and over, wittingly or not, the book employs this same tone of cheery misdirection as it discourses on stitching patterns and Gucci accessories, instead of concentrating on what these women are actually saying. “Can't go about without a scarf”; “wouldn't cause any trouble” … and not 'can't go about without a scarf because you'd be embarrassed,' and not 'trouble' as in 'the occasional impolite stare from a passerby.' The women putting such effort and creativity into stylish designs on their abaya might be getting a sense of fun and even a kind of feeble empowerment from doing so, but Pious Fashion almost completely downplays the constant background growl of threat behind every one of its individual stories. A young woman in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia might choose to put money or time into her niqab, but if she woke up one hot morning and decided to go to market bare-headed wearing a pair of shorts and a short-sleeved silk blouse, she wouldn't encounter titters and stares; at best, she'd be ordered back home by the first man she encountered, and at worst, she'd be physically assaulted. Young women on the streets of Tehran may sport the season's latest chador designs, but they absolutely can't sport no chadors at all.By writing a book that consistently makes misogynistic physical compulsion sound like a Milan fashion-show mix-and-match, Bucar creates a weird inversion of the reality faced by the women she interviews (and the many, many thousands of women in the cultures from which they come), and it's hard to escape the suspicion that part of the motivation here is to normalize and mainstream a backward form of chattel-marking that was born in the world of the 7^th century and very much should have stayed there.“Although determining the causes behind clothing trends is difficult,” Bucar writes, “it is evident that the aesthetic visions of various authorities do affect women's clothing choices.” The aesthetic visions of various authorities here does iniquitous stand-in duty for “violently sexist and repressive Muslim theocratic dictates.” It's not difficult to determine causality when causality is as simple as threat-and-compliance. “Wear this in order to express your individuality” is fashion; “wear this in order to avoid trouble” is not.