Accidental Burqa, By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

November 3, 2010 Whitney Farmer 9 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue located on an L.A. beach. She has an M.B.A., and voted.

It wasn’t exactly the worst Halloween costume that I ever wore. That one was a long time ago.

When I was 9 years old, my best friend Diana Cotton and I decided to use our favorite T.V. show, “Kolshack: The Night Stalker” as inspiration. The show centered on a hard-boiled (still don’t know what that means…) newspaper reporter who would investigate stories about monsters, causing aggravated fits from his editor who had a paper to get to press. Most of Kolshack’s stories were thrown in the trash after a self-deprecating but enigmatic voiceover that usually conveyed that no one would believe him, but everyone should.

Maybe the first, and possibly the most terrifying episode, centered around a vampire who hunted in Las Vegas. Apparently, the $5.00 steak dinners would cause juicy tourists to stay up all hours and make for easy pickins’. It’s the same scenario from countless Discovery Channel shows that talk about how the prey arrives first — like sea lions off the California coast — then the predators — like great white sharks, for opportunistic feeding.

In the “Kolshack…” episode, the main initial victims of the chief vampire were Women of the Night because he could get them away alone and no one would miss them. Then they would become vampires, and begin to dine on their johns.

So, my best friend Diana had a great pair of fangs and a cape, plus a natural widow’s peak in her hair that could be brushed back and look very vampire-y. I had a blonde bob wig from my mom, plus two older sisters who let me raid their closet since my parents were still at work at our family restaurant. Shortly afterwards, I left dressed in the wig, purple suede platforms, fishnet stockings, an extremely short dress with matching bloomers that we called a ‘sizzler’, and a rabbit fur coat. Next to my beaded choker that I tied around my neck, I carefully drew two little holes that dripped blood courtesy of the eyeliner and red lipstick that I also applied liberally to my face. Diana thought that I looked exactly like from the show. Off we both went into the night. She dressed as “Vampire”, and I was dressed as “Vampire’s Victim”. Neither of us knew anything about sex, and the subtext in the T.V. series completely escaped us because we were true innocents. I had no idea that for Halloween, at the age of 9, I had dressed as a hooker.

This entire scenario only became clear to me about six months ago. Now I know why people were polite but seemed confused and even concerned as they opened their doors to us that night.

Last weekend, the costume that I had planned had to be abandoned when one of the staff confided in me what she was going to be for our costume contest. She had no idea that I was planning the same obscure thing — it was truly a freakish coincidence — and I decided to put something else together in the few hours I had after waking up and before the next show. Who would have known that it would be so difficult to find 20 fake plastic toy steaks that I could duct tape to my body in a Lady Gaga homage? I went to work in a cocktail dress, hoping to lend an elegant gravitas to the night instead.

Within an hour of the door opening, I actually felt sad about not having any costume at all. I was talking with my Samoan security guard on the front door and said that if I had a sheet, I’d cut some lame holes in it and go as a Charlie Brown ghost. He remarked that we do have black sheets that we use for covering electronic equipment. Then he said, “What’s wrong with a black ghost? What are you, a racist?”

Go time. Out came the scissors. I had to cut an additional hole for a top knot for my hair so that the entire ensemble would stay in place as I was maneuvering around during the show. I thought that I made a magnificent black ghost and eagerly sought feedback from the crew…

Few guessed ‘ghost’. My most frequent responses were ‘eggplant’ because my topknot sticking out through the hole to keep it from shifting around looked like a stem, and ‘woman in a burqa’. I was astonished that my art had gone awry, but I was committed. Throughout the night, I glided between the pirates and the transformers, undead and dead celebrities. During the costume contest, I shoved the microphone under my sheet as I gave out the prizes. It was like a sauna under the drape, and I struggled against peripheral visibility problems while I tried to keep from tripping or getting trapped as drunk boys would grab the sheet get my attention so that they could tell me something. I commented to someone that I now knew why kids didn’t go as black ghosts at Halloween because — with the their limited visibility and mobility plus how difficult it would be to see them as they walked around at night — they would be road kill at a much higher rate than their white munchkin kinfolk. But I realized that women who wear burqas face the same dangers every day, not just once a year. In some places, the worse danger is faced by not wearing them.

The tradition of wearing a burqa pre-dates the establishment of Islam, at least as early as 200 A.D., and was present in many cultures that viewed women as chattel, or property over which ownership could be conveyed in marriage. Human desire was viewed as powerful and dangerous, and in large part the responsibility of women to keep under control. This force of primordial creative power was and is termed ‘shakti’ in Hindu culture, as an example. It gave rise to the tradition of both child marriages — viewed as necessary to contain the feminine force of creative power within marriage before first menstruation — and suttee — bride burning upon the death of a husband in order to eliminate the uncontrolled feminine sexual energy. An analogy would be of a nuclear reactor that has the rods removed. The atomic reactions would begin and increase until there is a conflagration, and this is so destructive and terrifying that it must be avoided at any cost. This belief in shakti was one of the reasons that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi rose to power: She had refused to take her life or be confined after the death of her husband. Therefore, her people viewed her as having fathomless, unrestrained creative power and were in awe of her. Until they killed her.

I found that wearing the accidental burqa made me not care about what my hair looked like, and I didn’t have to choreograph my facial expressions for public consumption. I could slouch and — eventhough I had on a great dress — I could have been wearing a torn pair of sweats and still been viewed as a possible vision of loveliness.

By the end of the night, I gladly took off my sweltering tent. Any burqa benefits were lost to me in the face of actually having to function and do business. I sat down in my office with the lead singer of the KISS tribute band who had been our headliner and conducted the settlement. He (with his kabuki makeup, topknot, and 8 inch platforms) and I (with my topknot, evening gown, and paratrooper boots) completed our financial business and were remarkably able to control hellish desires and not do anything that would make us eligible for damnation. It occurred to me that respect and honor are what allow a society to function, not the threat of caning or execution.
CNN reported on October 7, 2010 that the last constitutional hurdle against the wearing and imposing burqa wearing in France has been cleared. “… The ban passed both houses of the French legislature by overwhelming margins earlier this year, and is scheduled to come into effect in the spring. The law imposes a fine of 150 euros ($190) and/or a citizenship course as punishment for wearing a face-covering veil. Forcing a woman to wear a niqab or a burqa will be punishable by a year in prison or a 15,000-euro ($19,000) fine, the government said, calling it ‘a new form of enslavement that the republic cannot accept on its soil.’…”

In this instance, Viva’ la France.

Quote of the Blog, from Sabria Jawhar on the Huffington Post: “The intent of the clothing is to draw attention away from the woman, but in the West it only attracts unwanted attention.”