By I can’t take the bus. The revelation is one of several that hit me on my first day of walking around Amman, Jordan . It was oddly painful. Having been a resident of car-culture obsessed North Carolina for a long time, I always get an adrenaline rush when using the public transportation system of a major city. I haven’t been able to afford a car for the past couple of years, and the freedom that public transportation would normally provide is exhilarating. Even though I hardly speak any Arabic, I had somehow imagined that commuting in Amman would be easier than this.
Alas, I do not wear the “hijab” (head-covering). Therefore, I find myself too weirded out to take the bus.
Allow me to elaborate; I’ve always been proud of myself for being largely neutral on the hijab. I’ve come to understand that Islamic women’s dress is not a cultural monolith, that it has many definitions for different people, and can be, like all women’s clothing, both empowering and imprisoning, depending on who you ask. Following the events of September 11th , 2001, I decided to adopt an attitude I called “hijab blinders,” i.e., I decided that it would no longer matter to me who wore what, as long as they were basically nice people. In America , I think that veiled Muslim women were getting enough flack from psychos such as Ann Coulter, when all they wanted to do was to go on with their lives like everyone else.
I was able to make friends and interact with “hijabified” girls without the word itself even entering the picture. I commented on their hijab and other clothing choices about as much as they commented on my faded Guess jeans. I was living in my own mini-utopia of fashion. Then I came to Amman .
Manner and style of clothing is related to class-systems everywhere. As a rising senior at Duke University, I see many a coveted trend and designer label worn by the more well-off girls. The same thing occurs in the capital of a developing country such as my sometime hometown of Kiev, Ukraine ; a few women can afford a fancy coat in the cold weather, the rest wear layers and try not to turn blue.
Yet in Amman , the combination of class and clothing takes on a whole new meaning. The wealthier women, the ones who have no need to wait for a bus in the scorching sunlight, remain mostly unveiled. Meanwhile, their poorer sisters appear to be, on the whole, more “Islamically” (I put the word in quotation marks, because there is some debate as to whether or not the Quran specifically requires the hijab, or simply encourages modesty) attired.
As a matter of fact, I have been observing the residents of Amman for over two weeks now, and I have yet to see a woman riding the bus without a hijab on her head. I’m sure a few must be out there, somewhere, but I have yet to join their ranks; perhaps I never will. Having been fed horror stories of female foreigners heckled, threatened, and abused over “improper” dress, I have relinquished my desire to ride the public transportation system in Amman , propriety being such a subjective issue. If, for example, I board the bus wearing jeans and a short-sleeved t-shirt on a hot day, who’s to say I won’t offend someone whose ideals of propriety insist on a full “niqab” (to be entirely veiled with only the eyes showing)? One of the perks of public transportation is that it offers interaction and opportunity for further observation, but an unveiled woman in Amman would find herself in a strange setting upon boarding a bus. Is it worth it?
Gender norms are tricky to navigate in a city such as Amman , when the issue of class enters the picture, finding a way to be comfortable is almost impossible. Are wealthier women less religious, is this the issue here? Or do they have more room when it comes to interpreting religion? Are poorer women more religious? Or are they pressured into putting on hijab, because using public transportation involves more interaction with strange men, hence creating an environment that lies outside old gender rules? Is it a little bit of both or none of the above?
Speaking of men; it has become glaringly obvious to me that they do not face the same pressures regarding clothing. In Amman , I have seen more male posteriors sticking out of skin-tight pants than on the streets of Paris . These men mingle freely with their conservatively-dressed compatriots. Heckling only tends to occur when a man leaves his house wearing shorts, and even that is not an absolute by all means; I’ve seen a couple of men in shorts who seemed to be treated perfectly well.
I’ve heard that veiled anchors are banned from Jordanian news stations, because they are “backward.” I beg to differ. Treating women like crap because of a piece of clothing or lack thereof seems to be the real issue at stake here. The coin has to sides: on one hand, a veiled woman who attempts to be socially mobile will be discriminated against based on her style of dress. Meanwhile, an unveiled woman can be exposed to ridicule and scorn if she leaves her so-called comfort zone.
This situation becomes even more absurd when one takes into account the way that foreigners perceive Ammanite women. Arriving from the United States , I quickly noticed that women’s fashions are more conservative in Amman , with or without hijab, when compared to an average American city. Yet to hear some clerics talk, you’d think that Amman is a city whose female population is composed exclusively of “prostitutes.” In other words, one man’s hooker is another man’s virtuous virgin. And real women are meanwhile stuck trying to negotiate whatever role that has been assigned to them by men.
I’ve made myself as comfortable as I can in Amman . Yet I’ve also realized that comfort is much easier to achieve when I am being driven places, providing me with a degree of choice as to what to wear and much-coveted privacy, a bus full of soldiers that occasionally pulls up next to me notwithstanding. I have never been more aware of my femininity and the labels that go with it.
Some men try to dismiss feminists as abnormal wannabes obsessed with learning how to pee standing up. I think I have met few feminist unsatisfied with her own gender. Yet in Amman , I have suddenly felt a strange urge to tape my chest. Cut my hair. Be a boy. Be safe.
…Either that or suddenly inherit a million dollars from a long-lost relative and ride around in a Mercedes SUV.
