Mick Hartley

A couple of weeks back I posted that picture of Laura Bush sitting next to a woman covered in a sack during her recent trip to the Middle East. In the circumstances I thought the first lady carried herself pretty well. She was, as I posted later, on a trip to raise awareness of breast cancer: a notably worthwhile endeavour. The next day, in Saudi Arabia, she was photographed wearing an abaya.

Subsequently she’s come under attack from blogs in the US: lgf, for instance, and, less stridently, Roger L. Simon. Now comes the harshest and most eloquent criticism, from Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post, under the heading “Laura Bush’s embrace of tyranny“:

For people around the world, the United States is not merely a country, and not merely a superpower. The United States is also a symbol of human freedom.

Because their country is a symbol, the way that American officials behave is rarely taken at face value. Rather, their behavior is interpreted and reinterpreted by friend and foe alike.

Because she has no statutory power, the American First Lady’s actions are wholly symbolic. So when last week First Lady Laura Bush embarked on a visit to the Persian Gulf to promote breast cancer awareness in the Arab world as part of the US-Middle East Partnership for Breast Cancer, she traveled there as a symbol. And the symbolic message that her visit evoked is a deeply disturbing one.

As a Washington Post report of her trip to Saudi Arabia from last Thursday noted, there is a dire need in the kingdom to raise public awareness of breast cancer and its treatments. Due to social taboos, some 70 percent of breast cancer cases in Saudi Arabia are not reported until the late stages of the disease. It is possible that the local media attention that Mrs. Bush’s visit aroused may work to save the lives of women whose husbands will now permit them to be screened for the disease and receive proper medical treatment for it in its early stages.

And this is where the disturbing aspect of Mrs. Bush’s visit enters the picture. During her public appearances, the First Lady limited her remarks to the issue of breast cancer awareness. Yet in the Persian Gulf, it is impossible to separate the issue of breast cancer or for that matter the very fact of the First Lady’s visit from the issue of the systematic mistreatment and oppression of women in the Saudi Arabia specifically and throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds generally.

Glick then outlines all the oppressions that Saudi women suffer under, then…

Due to the fact that the abayas convey a symbolic message of effective enslavement of women, Mrs. Bush’s interaction with women clad in abayas was the aspect of her trip most scrutinized. In the United Arab Emirates, Mrs. Bush was photographed sitting between four women covered head to toe in abayas while she was wearing regular clothes. The image of Mrs. Bush sitting between four women who look like nothing more than black piles of fabric couldn’t have been more viscerally evocative and consequently, symbolically meaningful.

The image told the world that she – and America – is free and humane while the hidden women of Arabia are enslaved and their society is inhumane.

But then Mrs. Bush went to Saudi Arabia and the symbolic message of the previous day was superseded and lost when she donned an abaya herself and had her picture taken with other abaya-clad women. The symbolic message of those photographs also couldn’t have been clearer. By donning an abaya, Mrs. Bush symbolically accepted the legitimacy of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies, (or disembodies). Understanding this, conservative media outlets in the US criticized her angrily.

Sunday morning, Mrs. Bush sought to answer her critics in an interview with Fox News. Unfortunately, her remarks compounded the damage. Mrs. Bush said, “These women do not see covering as some sort of subjugation of women, this group of women that I was with. That’s their culture. That’s their tradition. That’s a religious choice of theirs.”

It is true that this is their culture. And it is also their tradition. But it is not their choice. Their culture and tradition are predicated on denying them the choice of whether or not to wear a garment that denies them their identity just as it denies them the right to make any choices about their lives. The Saudi women’s assertions of satisfaction with their plight were no more credible than statements by hostages in support of their captors.

As the First Lady, Laura Bush is an American symbol. By having her picture taken wearing an abaya in Saudi Arabia – the epicenter of Islamic totalitarian misogyny – Mrs. Bush diminished that symbol. In so doing, she weakened the causes of freedom and liberty which America has fought since its founding to secure and defend at home and throughout the world.

I’m mystified by this reaction. First, what was the context in which the abaya photograph was taken? Here’s the Washington Post:

When gynecologist Samia al-Amoudi was found last year to have breast cancer, a disease that still carries an intense stigma in this conservative country where women are forced to cover in public, she decided to share the details in her newspaper column, shocking many Saudis.

But the 50-year-old single mother insisted on telling her story in more than 30 television, magazine and newspaper interviews, trying to force a spotlight, she said, on a disease believed to be the leading cause of death among Middle Eastern women.

This week’s visit to Saudi Arabia by first lady Laura Bush, who is on a regional tour to raise awareness about breast cancer, is a windfall to Amoudi’s battle to bring the issue to the public, she said.

“The fact that there is a lot of media coverage of your visit, and people know you are here only for the purpose of spreading breast cancer awareness, that gives it importance and will really help our campaign,” Amoudi told Bush at a “Break the Silence” coffee meeting Wednesday with other breast cancer survivors…

At the end of the meeting, Amoudi presented Bush with a gift from the group — a black head scarf adorned with two pink ribbons stitched on the sides. Bush draped it over her hair briefly as the women beamed and moved in closer for photos.

She was given a head scarf as a present, she briefly put it on, photographs were taken….and she’s embracing tyranny? Weakening the causes of freedom and liberty? The poor woman really doesn’t deserve this kind of abuse. She was, quite clearly, acting with what she thought was the appropriate degree of civility. She’d already sat uncovered in a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah: that was an occasion where the symbolism of an uncovered head was significant, and she rose to it. Here, meeting women involved in the breast cancer awareness campaign, she opted for being polite, being friendly. To judge from the expression of the other woman there, she made the right decision.

As for her comment – “These women do not see covering as some sort of subjugation of women, this group of women that I was with. That’s their culture. That’s their tradition. That’s a religious choice of theirs” – she’s quite correct. Admittedly the word choice is a little strained in the context, but it doesn’t do to push this false consciousness line too far. We may think they’re being subjugated by a requirement to wear a head scarf in public, and we’re entitled to try and persuade them of that fact, but we shouldn’t be surprised if in the end they disagree.

There are of course degrees here, and it’s a fine line to walk. My view is that a scarf over the head is nothing to get exercised about. It’s not necessarily a sign of the subjugation of women. In the West it’s a common enough display of feminine modesty when, for instance, entering a church. It’s the veil over the face, the denial of a social identity, that offends me. If Laura Bush had stuck a black sack over her head I’d probably agree with her critics. As it is it all seems a distraction from what was a notably worthy and, let’s hope, successful visit.