Imagining Women
Much of the public discussion on women in society is about Muslim women. In particular on what they wear or should wear. Most people in the Netherlands have seem to grown accustomed to women wearing headscarves. An often written and heard statement is:
They wear headscarves but the rest of their clothing is very tight and revealing leaving little to the imagination
Exactly the type of clothing that seems leave much to imagine since the comment is abundantly present. Sometimes these type of girls are seen as ‘modern girls‘. Sexy girls, or more precise what heterosexual, white, non-Islamic men, perceive as sexy seems to be preferred and if Muslim girls only show a glimpse of that ‘we’ don’t really care about the irrational and backward headscarf, in particular if it is a ‘fashionable’ one. I know I am giving a very stereotypical image about how men or society at large likes to see its women, but now Dutch commercial television has reached a new high in portraying women on television with a so called ‘battle of the sexes‘ program: Lekker Slim (Pretty Smart). According to RTL:RTL.NL – Lekker Slim – Programma info
Six male candidats how to try to understand the female brain: instead of answering questions themselves they have to guess what answer six beautiful female candidates have given.
[…] It does not matter if the answer given by the women is correct or not; what matters is if the men guessed if the women would answer correctly or not.
Answering questions such as ‘Who is the Dalai Lama?’, Where is Ibiza’ and ‘What role played Germany during World War II?” may seem easy for the men. In pretty smart the female brain proves to be more mysterious than they think.
In this show loaded with testosteron the male couples are fighting to win a nice amount of money (the girls get presents, MdK). At the same time this is a humor loaded battle of the sexe. Because what will prevail? The knowledge about facts of these beautiful girls or the knowledge about people of the man?
[flashvideo filename=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmK9qcBHFm0 /]
The result is a show in which (mostly blonde) girls who do not have that much general knowledge produce one mistake after the other and the men laugh their pants of (the men also do not know that much, but that doesn’t seem to be that funny). The girls’ ‘dumbness’ is used for high view ratings and in the trailer their ‘dumb’ answers are used to attract people for the next show. Did anyone tell these girls (or are they actrices?) that they would be portrayed as dumb, superficial and objects of ridicule? Is this the example we want to show on Sunday evening prime time?
And if we allow TV to portray women on TV as superficial but beautiful, objects of ridicule but also sexy, do we still have reason to critique women who choose to cover themselves (Muslims or not) exactly because they do not want to be confronted with such stereotypes? Or does the fact that ‘we’ like women with headscarves as long as the rest of their clothes doesn’t leave much for imagination, mean that we also want to reduce these women into objects of sexism and ridicule?