Duck and Cover

The tents were up in Bryant Park. I thought, how brave to stand up for fashion in this age of relevance and seriousness. Very impish.

How divine the law of unintended consequences! While we are doing our thing warring against Sheiks (among others) over vague abstractions like Democracy and Human Rights and Freedom, etc., ad nauseum, the French have brought us back to reality, which is to say, what is “Chic.” They’re launching a war (conveniently timed to pull all fashinista eyes to Paris in a big headline-grabbing buzzkill for Fashion Week…in New York) against…scarves.

Brilliant! Such a relief to move away from unsatisfyingly vague notions like human rights and genocide with those dire political and human consequences. I grew flummoxed, I admit, over elusive WMDs. Pretty messy business in any case. No clear answers till it’s all sorted out. Right now the headline is: “Plenty of Ammo, too many sides.”

On scarves, however, no such roiling of ideas and emotions needed. Just say no to religious hats! Has a ring, n’est-ce pas? And speaking of jewelry, if da bling-bling is a cross, better not be too big or you can’t wear it to school, either. Taste police will be all right with giant skulls, oversized Italian chains. But no crosses, crescents or stars.

Perhaps it is the nobility of the French. They are leading the fight for fashion rights for all the women in the world now forced to listen to men about what they wear.

Or maybe it has something to do with the five million Muslims living in France, basically an underclass complete with a heretofore-mostly-U.S. racial hue. A testimony to a flaccid, but highly inevitable, immigration policy that allowed too many non-French guest workers a generation ago, only to be faced with a second generation that is French by birth but not completely by culture. O, The times, the cultures!

True, the hat banning applies to all religious raiment, yarmulkes included. But the unintended consequence of banning a “hat” style may be a new cultural front on the global war on terrorism.

To remain covered, women will have to go to private schools, probably religious, and fundamentalist. Or they will have to break from wearing religious, mandated dress. This could start a cultural and generational war in French-Muslim families. And those who chose will break the law and wear the scarf. So the scarf-wearing, itself, will contribute to greater polarization…in fashion and the real world.

Yet, for all this obvious politics and trouble, I say “Vive la France!” Fashion has always caused something of a stir and the French have most often held the stick. This time they’ve stuck a blow for fashion, launched debate and a struggle for freedom by outlawing a scarf. By declaring a line in the sand over women’s fashion. It makes a weird sense that the French would choose to make their stand on this particular front line of the war on terrorism.

That said, it might open the way to a vociferous, but hopefully non-violent, effort to alter the treatment of some, not all, Muslim women, by some, not all, Muslim men. Those being forced, and forcing others, to cover.

So before dismissing it, consider the French initiative on the fashion front. The scarf, they appear to be suggesting, is the key to an entire cultural dynamic of “different rights for women and men” at the heart of the basic culture war going on between secular and fundamentalist (both religious and paramilitary) governments.

The West moved, haltingly, from Susan B. Anthony to Brigitte Bardot to Burka debates in about a century. We can only hope our fundamentalist brethren see the light a bit sooner…if only for self interest.

Along with women’s freedoms in the West, men got more rights, too. Good for every one. Good for business. Good for the fashion business, too. ¶ 1:09 AM