By Farah Ali, Reprinted with permission of Azizah Magazine
No woman likes to think of herself as oppressed. “I am liberated,” we say confidently to ourselves when our identities as Muslim American women are questioned. We make our own decisions; some of us are stay-at-home moms, while others are career women. Most of us marry and a few stay single. We come from different backgrounds and have our own priorities in life. We make our own life choices. So we must be liberated.
I chose to be a History and Linguistics major instead of pre-med, and I chose to drop out of my school’s master’s program in order to go to law school. I, along with many like-minded women in America, am doing what I want, and thinking for myself. We have to be liberated. Right?
My doubt in this liberation mantra stems from a conversation I had with a friend regarding her broken relationship. “We talked about marriage once, and I think that might have scared him away,” she divulged. “I was reading this article online; guys scare easy. They’re afraid of commitment. You just need to stay away from topics like that so they feel more at ease.”
Now here’s the point of this little anecdote: How do liberated American women come to such a conclusion? The article my friend mentioned resonated with me. Of course men scare easily, I knew that. I’ve read my share of women’s general interest magazines. It’s the typical scenario for the single woman: ready for a relationship (usually marriage), but lacking a man who’s ready to commit. And the typical cure suggested in women’s magazines (present company excepted) for this ailment consists of tips on how not to scare men away before they’re ready to commit. So it got me thinking, these same magazines also give tips on how to make men happy, and how to avoid conflicts with them. Well, that was great, I thought. I was pretty clueless on how to interpret men’s behavior anyway. It was great, that is, until I became curious about men’s magazines, wondering if they were as woman-centric as women magazines were man-centric.
Being someone who loves research obsessively, I looked at about a dozen men’s and women’s magazines and examined the blurbs on their covers to see what topics they each emphasized. Here are some blurbs from the women’s magazines:
Good-Bye Kisses and Hugs: Pay attention the next time you and your man part ways.
His L-Word Phobia: The honest truth about why he won’t say “I l you.”
Dating Smarts You Must Have.
I’m a Muslim woman who doesn’t date or seek to have any level of intimacy with a man before marriage, but I was riveted. A few of these magazines under my belt and I could be a relationship expert. But compare those to a few general interest men’s magazine topics:
The 162 Greatest Things About America
Profiles in Courage: A Marine On His Way to War
Kidnapped by Terrorists: How Three Americans Survived
To be frank, I was appalled. Not only are women-centric blurbs completely absent from the covers, but men’s magazines address interesting topics like politics and culture. (I even briefly considered subscribing to some of the men’s magazines when I was done with my research.)
But interesting topics are subjective, so let’s cast that aside and focus on the fact that there’s more of an emphasis on women catering to men in our magazines than the reverse in men’s magazines. It just didn’t seem fair. Here we were, spending hours reading up on how to figure men out. It would be somewhat tolerable to me if I knew that guys were putting just as much effort in trying to get their acts together to make women happy, but according to these magazines, they weren’t. Or at least it wasn’t important for them to do so.
Granted, what’s in magazines doesn’t necessarily reflect how men and women actually behave and think. But publications with high circulations do influence some of their readers. And here I get back to this issue of being liberated. Two questions arise: First, are we really liberated? And secondly, how immune are we, as Muslim American women, to this male-centric mindset? These women’s magazines’ chief audience is non-Muslim American women. Looking at a magazine that caters to the Muslim American woman such as Azizah, we safely conclude that the average Muslim American women doesn’t date and probably doesn’t care about which strapless style will look best on her figure either.
However, my friend’s reliance on articles from women-friendly websites, which in turn get their information from magazines, makes me answer no to both questions above. Women seem addicted to any and all literature that promise to unearth the mysteries behind a successful relationship. They seem to be so because these high-readership magazines have been publishing the same information over and over: how to get, hold onto and please a man.
Not that there’s anything wrong with making a man happy. You owe it to your husband to please him if he’s footing the bills and is deathly afraid to tell you that your new coat makes you look fat. But still, where does that leave women? So many hours at the mall in search of the most flattering outfit for your body type, so many dollars spent on a subscription to a magazine that teaches you relationship tricks, and so many tears wept over the man whom you can’t seem to have/make happy. All of this expended energy would again seem tolerable if I knew that men had it the same way. I wouldn’t mind spending all my time if I knew they were making the same consideration for us. But most of them aren’t. Society doesn’t require them to. Boys will be boys, after all.
I asked earlier where this leaves women. I’m honestly not sure. I do know that we as a gender have bought into this notion of being a bit subservient to men, probably without even being aware of it. Sure, we’ve come a long way with equal rights, having careers and taking on roles that were once considered inappropriate for women. We’re doing all kinds of things now, but we still haven’t embraced independence. And liberation would seem pretty flimsy without independence, wouldn’t it? But look around and ask yourself where the independence is, when one of the New York Times Best Seller list books is He’s Just Not That Into You, a book so successful that the author, Greg Behrendt, even had a TV show to help clueless women with their relationship dilemmas; when relationship experts spend most of their time advising women rather than men, giving them tips on how to act with men, virtually ignoring the other half of the population, which could also use a few pointers on how to act with women.
When we take a step back and really observe all of these patterns, and see just how acceptable they’ve become in our society, it makes me wonder how far we’ve come as American women after all. Great, we can vote and be CEOs, but life isn’t perfect until you’ve made it with a man and have him wrapped around your finger.
So how do Muslim women fit into all of this? Since we have Islam to guide us, it’s tempting to think that we’re safe from these societal expectations. But we’re still American. We live here, wear American clothes, eat American food, watch American television, and read American literature, including magazines. Some of us may be more traditional or cling to an ethnic culture more so than to American culture, but regardless of whether you consider yourself an Asian American or an American Asian; you’re assimilated into American society to some degree, especially if you’re calling yourself an American.
What is she saying? Having Islam isn’t sufficient to be an independent, free woman here? Blasphemy! That’s not what I’m saying. I promise. My whole point here is actually the opposite. As we all know, being Muslim and saying “I believe that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger” is the basis of our religion, but saying that just isn’t enough to feel the true meaning of Islam, to feel true inner peace within ourselves. Islam is Arabic for ‘peace’, which we believe is achieved by submitting ourselves completely and wholly to the will of God. Exactly. God. Not man. God.
I know I have ranted about the oppression of women in American society, and if you want my opinion on how to counter it, I just gave it. It’s truly that simple. Be considerate to others, men and women alike, and make them happy, but save your real energy and devotion for Allah, the Exalted One. I’m afraid it’s really just that simple.
I try my best to be nice and considerate and all things pleasant to both men and women, because I’m a Muslim and I’m proud that my creed teaches me to act in that manner. But it stops there. I don’t study up on how to read people’s body language and how to make guys like me, because if they don’t like me just as I am, I don’t really want their company anyway. No, the extra efforts I save for Allah. In my book, only He is deserving of pulling all the stops to please.
Posted August 6, 2008
Originally published by Azizah Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2008
