This is Not Our Traditional Dress
Click the image above to watch…
The brief and powerful film above is making the rounds of late, but not nearly enough. When I first watched it, I was stunned by the beauty of the women, and shocked at the intentional cloaking of their feminine grace and elegance. Traditional dress seems a birthright to me, and as an American woman never having been told to cover myself entirely when out in public, I wanted to find out why women wear the burqa.
In Afghanistan, the women wear the chadaree, similar to the burqa, but with a small opening for the eyes. Before the Taliban took over, chadarees were rarely worn in the cities and public spaces. That sounds like an involuntary thing to me. If you’re a woman living in such a place, and you’ve been told that you can’t live here, buy food, or conduct your life here unless you wear that…what is the alternative?
Anyway…why do woman wear these coverings? I don’t imagine there will be very much about it from the women who feel most comfortable and safe in them. It’s understandable if that’s what they’ve always known. Clearly there are women all over the world who have to wear them in order to live in relative peace where they are, though, and I pray that such situations shift rapidly in our ever-changing reality.
The world needs much more beauty!
