From Belly Dancers to Burqas: Media Representations of Muslim Women

Today at RIC, a very intelligent woman named Dr. Afshan Jafar gave a lecture on Media Representations of Muslim Women. Dr. Jafar grew up in Pakistan herself, and now is a Sociologist working at Connecticut College. Her lecture was very interesting, I really enjoyed it. She spoke of famous media representations such as Jasmine from Aladdin, and the famous Steve McCurry photograph "Afghan Girl" that is an iconic image on the cover of a 1985 issue of National Geographic. She spoke of how the photographer of "Afghan Girl" never learned her name or her life story, and it reminded me a little bit of Esmé from "Becoming Something Different". Esmé's teachers and guidance counselors at school took one look at her and her ethnicity and assumed that she best belonged in remedial and ELL classes, instead of classes that would ultimately lead her to graduation. This is how many people saw the portrait of "Afghan Girl" with no identity besides her middle eastern ethnicity, just how Esmé's school couldn't see past her Mexican ethnicity.

Dr. Jafar compared how Muslim women dressed in coverings are seen by many Americans as oppressed, Muslims seeing Americans dressed very immodestly, for example, at the beach, could be seen to them as American women being oppressed and exploited for our bodies. Another comparison that opened my eyes was at the beginning of the lecture. Dr. Jafar asked us to finish the end of the sentence "Muslim women are...." on a piece of scrap paper. Many of the finished sentences ended with words like "oppressed" "controlled by men" and "silent." She then explained how when she asks groups of people to finish the sentence "Christian women are.." there are a million questions asked to clarify what type of Christian women. In this exercise, all Muslim women were generalized. This made me think of the reading White Privilege by Peggy McIntosh, because the less we know about a cultural group, the more we generalize them and think we understand that culture.

The third reading I connected to this lecture wasn't a reading, but the media representation presentation we did. Dr. Jafar explained to us how in Aladdin, the villain was made to be more stereotypically arab and "barbaric", while Aladdin looked and spoke more stereotypically American. This representation of muslim stereotypes in disney movies was a topic we covered in our project.

Attached I have an article explaining the identity of "Afghan Girl" more fully:
-http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text

I also have an article from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee about stereotypes in American media:
-http://www.adc.org/education/arab-stereotypes-and-american-educators/

This is another link debunking common Muslim stereotypes:
-http://teachmideast.org/essays/26-stereotypes/38-stereotypes-of-arabs-middle-easterners-and-muslims

This cartoon was also displayed in Dr. Jafar's presentation, it compares the judgements that both muslim and american women face based on what they wear and how that correlates to their oppressive culture:

Here is the famous "Afgan Girl" photo, the girl's name was unknown for 17 years until National Geographic tracked her down in 2002: