scholarly journals Dressed to Marry: Islam, Fashion, and the Making of Muslim Brides in Brazil

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 499
Author(s):  
Gisele Fonseca Chagas ◽  
Solange R. Mezabarba
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Religious Orientations ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Female Beauty ◽  
Dress Practices ◽  
Brazilian Culture

This article explores the dress practices of Muslim women in Brazil, focusing on the ways through which they choose, prepare, use, and talk about their wedding garments. The aim is to understand how religiously oriented women interpret the Islamic normative codes concerning the coverage of the female body when managing their appearance, particularly when “special celebrations” such as wedding rituals are involved. How do they combine bridal fashion trends with religious orientations? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and personal interviews, this analysis stresses that the desired aesthetic of Muslim women’s marital garments unfolds a search for a modest authenticity through which “Brazilian culture”, “female beauty”, and Islam are mobilized. In conclusion, the study points to the dynamic ways through which this specific encounter of religion and fashion produce an aesthetic based on a degree of improvisation and creativity, since the Islamic fashion industry is absent in the Brazilian market.

Approaches to the wardrobe challenges of Muslim women in the west

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1155-1173
Author(s):  
Wafaa H. Shafee
Keyword(s):  
Community Integration ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Dress Code ◽  
The West ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Global Brands ◽  
Women's Clothing ◽  
Clothing Choices

Purpose This study aims to identify the challenges of Muslim women in terms of their dress code in Western society by including their clothing needs in the strategies of the fashion industry and marketing. The study focuses on wardrobe choices that have helped overcome these challenges and facilitated Muslim women’s integration into western society. Design/methodology/approach Descriptive statistics were used in this study through a questionnaire that was distributed among 265 randomly selected Muslim women in London, UK. The results have been presented in charts showing the percentages and frequencies of the different behaviors and challenges that were faced by Muslim women in the west. Findings The majority of the study sample preferred to use a variety of modern fashion trends from global brands to integrate with the community. The essential criteria for the Muslim women’s clothing choices include head hair cover and conservative full-length clothes that are non-transparent that cover the neck and chest area. Originality/value A study has investigated the clothing needs and behaviors of Muslim women in the west for their community integration. It analyzed the results and linked them with the role and contributions of designers, producers and fashion marketers in accepting the western society of Muslims and their integration with its members.

Producing the category of ‘Islamist’ women: a Deleuzian perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 146470012094660
Author(s):  
Hesna Serra Aksel
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Social Resources ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The World

When addressing the Muslim women question, one of the problematic issues is the centrality of a religious tradition or a political ideology as a primary subject of inquiry. Muslim women are seen as the embodiment of a singular tradition or ideology, as in the case of Turkey, where the contemporary headscarf-wearing women are represented as ‘Islamist’. In this project, I aim to problematise this stereotyping categorisation through ontological conceptualisations, inspired by the French thinker Gilles Deleuze. To implement the relational ontology of Deleuze, I examine headscarf contestations in Turkey through interviews conducted in two women’s organisations in Turkey: Capital City Women’s Platform (Baskent Kadin Platformu) and Hazar. I argue that the world constantly ‘becomes’ through flows of relations between multiple elements; therefore, it is a multiplicity, an intensity and fractured. With this Deleuzian ontology in mind, I consider the quotidian physical, material and social resources of my interviews with the aim of elucidating relations between a female body and the commodities produced by multiple socio-economic and political factors in Turkey. Then I address a Deleuzian understanding of categorisations such as class, gender, race and ideology. These categorisations, for Deleuze, are aggregations of multiplicities and fluidities forming specific fixations according to a range of ascribed characteristics, such as income, education, employment or dress codes. In this regard, I conclude that the label ‘Islamist’ restrains the relational and multiple characters of headscarf practices within a unifying category by attributing certain features to particular embodiments and materials.

Flirting With the Judges: Bikini Fitness Competitors’ Negotiations of Femininity in Bodybuilding Competitions

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 294-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahar Tajrobehkar
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork

Women’s bodybuilding manifestly challenges hegemonic understandings of the female body as weak, fragile, and limited. Because it has acquired characteristics that are traditionally deemed masculine, the muscular woman is thought to be in need of having her femininity “restored”. Perhaps for this reason, in bodybuilding competitions, female competitors are required to display femininity and implied heterosexuality on stage through their attitude, gestures, posing, make-up, hairstyle, and adornments. The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of competitors in the Bikini category to understand the ways in which they perceive and negotiate the expectations of idealized femininity within bodybuilding competitions. Semi-structured interviews, supplemented with ethnographic fieldwork, were conducted with nine female bodybuilding competitors. The data gathered indicated the contradictory views that some female bodybuilders hold of female muscularity and of femininity. The participants were able to negotiate the judging criteria, albeit at times reluctantly and with frequent expressions of criticism and disapproval.

scholarly journals Women undercover: exploring the intersectional identities of Muslim women through modest fashion

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romana B. Mirza
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Beauty Ideals ◽  
Dress Practices ◽  
Clothing Choices

Significant discrimination is directed toward Muslim women who dress modestly. Despite this Muslims will spend an estimated US$75 billion on modest fashion by 2020, a 70% increase since 2015. Past research in modest fashion has focused on influencers, the industry, or on veiling. Muslim women’s everyday dress practices and their lived experiences have not been studied. Through an intersectional framework, this research uses wardrobe interviews with sixteen Muslim women and digital storytelling with four of them to explore how they embody their identity through modest fashion, how intersectionality impacts their clothing choices, and what contexts influence their sartorial decisions. Three themes emerged: what influences their style; how they shop and style outfits; and what consequences are faced. My research found that by prioritizing modesty as a sartorial practice, these women are diverting the Western gaze, navigating away from superficial and oppressive Western beauty ideals, and challenging narrow Islamophobic stereotypes. Keywords: modesty, female modesty, sartorial agency, dressed bodies, fashion, hijab, Muslim, Islamophobia, intersectionality, fashion diversity, Western gaze, Orientalism

Classified beauty: Goods and bodies in Brazilian women’s magazines

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Everardo Rocha ◽  
Marina Frid
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Goods ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Women's Images ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Female Beauty

This article analyzes women’s images in Brazilian magazines aiming to understand the logic behind the construction of notions of female beauty, health, and wellbeing. More precisely, it investigates how magazines associate an extensive array of goods to women’s bodies, sustaining a permanent logic of consumption. At the explicit level of images, magazines express novelty, promote innovations, and offer ever-new possibilities for readers to accomplish strong, slim, and forever young bodies. However, the analysis suggests the existence and operation of an underlying recurrent pattern that intends to classify products and services according to female body fragments in a process analogous to the system known as totemism. Finally, this work indicates that the ideological project of magazines is to create an unreachable woman model forever translated into consumer goods.

Factors influencing fashion consciousness in hijab fashion consumption among hijabistas

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 476-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siti Hasnah Hassan ◽  
Harmimi Harun
Keyword(s):  
Muslim Women ◽  
Marketing Strategies ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
Dress Code ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Fashion Products ◽  
The People ◽  
Fashion Consciousness ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a method to understand the predictors of hijab fashion consciousness and consumption. Muslim women in developing countries have evolved from living a traditional to a modern lifestyle, as more women become more educated, work and earn their own money. As modern sophisticated Muslim women, they have transformed themselves in the way they dress and don their hijab while adhering to the Shariah-compliant dress code. As a result, hijab fashion among hijabistas “Muslim women who wear fashionable outfits with matching fashionable headscarves” is flourishing. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected using questionnaires distributed to Muslim women who visited the Kuala Lumpur International Hijab Fashion Fair 2014 using the convenience sampling method. A total of 345 final useable data were used for data analysis using SmartPLS. Findings Results show that dressing style, fashion motivation, fashion uniqueness and sources of fashion knowledge positively influence fashion consciousness and indirectly influence hijab fashion consumption. Practical implications Results of this paper will provide insights to the people involved in the fashion industry, such as designers, retailers and marketers, to understand the hijabista market segment. Practitioners can design proper hijab fashion products that are Shariah-compliant to capture the segment of Muslim women with proper marketing strategies. Originality/value The fashion of Muslim women, particularly the hijab fashion, has received little attention in the fashion literature. This paper hopes to provide new insights to relevant researchers and industries.

Muslim Fashionistas in Contemporary Turkey

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-422
Author(s):  
Merve Kütük-Kuriş
Keyword(s):  
Practice Theory ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
Female Entrepreneurs ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Turkey’s Islamic fashion market transformed during the 2010s with the entry of young, bourgeois, fashion-conscious Muslim female entrepreneurs. As designers, manufacturers, and retailers, these “Muslim fashionistas” not only gained the attention of young Muslim women but also became lifestyle gurus, projecting images of the successful entrepreneur, the ideal mother, the benevolent philanthropist, and the leisure enthusiast. This combination of roles resonates with the notion of the “ideal Muslim woman” promoted by the government. But its performance entails moments of imperfection and moral dilemma, as the demands of capitalism and consumerism place Muslim fashionistas in opposition to the teachings of their faith and traditional gender regimes. Drawing on practice theory, and on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Istanbul, this article explores Muslim fashionistas’ everyday performances in the fields of family, charity, and leisure. The objective is to analyze how these agents negotiate and interpret quotidian inconsistencies between their religious and social ideals and those ideals’ manifestation.

The New Horizons of Piety

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahar Amer
Keyword(s):  
Muslim Women ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Beauty Pageants ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Sacred Texts

This article focuses on the development of new forms of Muslim piety that challenge both Euro-American stereotypes of Muslim women veiling and conservative interpretations of the meaning of hijab in Islam. It shows how recent progressive readings of Islamic sacred texts, highlighting the spiritual equality of the sexes, are questioning persistent assumptions that Muslim women are required to veil. These progressive intellectual and theological voices are accompanied by the development of more popular and far reaching industries that are facilitating the emergence of new practices of piety: the Islamic fashion industry, Islamic beauty pageants, veiled dolls, and artistic voices. Taken together, these new modes of Islamic piety show the imbrication of religious expressions, faith, and global market forces.

scholarly journals Micro-Physics of Discipline: Spaces of the Self in Middle Eastern Women Life Writings

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
The Self ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Middle Eastern Women ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
Condition Of Women ◽  
Female Subjects

Contemporary life narratives by or about Middle Eastern women often portray the female body as the object of oppressive ethical and political governmentalities. This article focuses on the writings of a generation of secular and Muslim women, whose works describe the condition of women as subjugated by sovereign states and disciplinary governments, to examine the politics of space in the workings of the complex interactions between gender and power. To this end, Erving Goffman’s spatial theories on the territories of the self and the modalities of contamination are used to examine the function of political spaces in Jean P. Sasson’s Princess, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, Zainab Salbi’s Between Two Worlds, and Manal al-Sharif’s Daring to Drive. The findings indicate that three modes of violations strategically contaminate the female subjects’ spaces of the self: informational preserve, physical and interpersonal. Of all the three modes, physical contamination—such as mandatory veiling/deveiling, corporeal exposure, forced exposure to dirt and appropriation of personal possessions—proves to be the most common. The study concludes that even though space is used as a strategy of regulating the female body, the subjugated women constantly struggle to re-construct different spaces to disrupt the flow of contamination.

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