Bad Muslim Jokes

I was watching the latest episode of Party Down, a show on Starz that I am pretty sure no one has heard of but is actually really funny, and for the first time, I was offended by an offhand joke. In a rather farcical episode, the Party Down catering gang is at a gig for an after-party for the actors of a community theater play. Two of the main characters - Casey and Henry, her on-again-off-again love interest, are messing around with the costumes from the play backstage. Casey jokingly puts on a flamboyant pink burqa costume and Henry says, "I still can see your crudely wanton ankles," he says sarcastically.

I don't believe in censorship, and sometimes humor pushes the boundary of good taste. But I found this joke fundamentally annoying. It seems as if a new trend in comedy is to mock Muslim women's choice of modest dress. I haven't seen the new Sex and the City 2 movie (shoot me first), but I read in a review that there are hijinks involving "flaunt[ing] the flesh in front of Muslims." I find jokes where an enlightened Western woman shows off her beautiful tanned body in front of Muslim men and their covered women and the ensuing stares they encounter not funny at all.

Modest dress is a choice for most women, especially those of us who choose to do it in America. There exists no oppressive father (with a scary beard and outrageous temper) who tells their daughter in heavily-accented English, "You will wear zee hee-jab! I command it as does Allah!!!!" Of course, I admit, there are negotiations between parents and their kids when they are teenagers on what is classy and what is just plain hooker trashiness, but I assume that happens in white folks' homes, too. Classic example in Clueless, when Cher's dad says, "Cher, what is that?" when she's going on her "date" with the rather obviously homosexual Christian. Cher responds, "It's a dress, Daddy."
"Says who?" he commands.
"Calvin Klein," she states. There were many permutations of this conversation when I was a kid and wanted to wear some outrageously trashy Arden B. or Betsy Johnson shirt to high school, and my mother would argue against it.

And while I understand that some of us who do not wear the hijab make arbitrary choices on what we do and do not wear (no short sleeves or no sleeveless or no capris etc.), they are still our choices (not some ominous patriarchal figure who looms in the background at home), and they should be respected. Because on the whole, let's be honest, those of us who attempt modesty achieve it compared to mainstream America.

And I hate to be cliched, but the Sex and the City gals are not liberated in their scantily clad clothing. They are enslaved by it. Wearing low-cut tops or short skirts doesn't make you more enlightened or more free than a burqa-clad Muslim woman. Because men objectify you - you are not a sum of your parts, but just a faceless, mindless pair of boobs, ass, or legs to them. Female objectification is everywhere in movies (probably because of patriarchal male directors and crass American audiences). Ever seen a movie where the camera languishes over an actress's lean body (see: any Jessica Alba movie)? Or how about gratuitous female nudity, where an actress is dancing around in her undergarments for no apparent reason (ex. any Katherine Heigl movie)? Now that is female objectification. These kinds of movies make me want to put on a black burqa even in the 90 degree, sweltering summer heat of North Carolina.

--By Mariam, who apologizes in advance for not making this blog as funny as previous entries but blames Uzma K. for her influence in reverting Mariam back to her radical feminist ways.