Gender Aid Interventions and Afghan Women: Images versus Realities

The author Faegheh Shiraz born in Iran is Associate Professor in the Islamic Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin. She is author of several academic publications. Her most recent book is “Velvet Jihad: Muslim Women's Quiet Resistance to Islamic Fundamentalists”. She is currently working on another book project hoping to publish it by 2016.

The essay “Gender Aid Interventions and Afghan Women: Images versus Realities” is one of the original essays of book “Muslim Women in War and Crisis” in 2011 by Lina Abirafeh. The author is representing in the essay different cultural viewpoints of Afghanistan women. The text is about how the Western media has been represented Muslim women and how Muslim women represent themselves.

In the mid-1970s there started to be talking about women´s rights and modern technology. The Author points out how Western media perceptions build a certain kind of image of Afghnistan women. The author argues in the text “Afghan women reveals a specific rhetoric that has informed public perception and in turn has informed the design of aid interventions for Afghan women.” (Shiraz F, 2011, p.79) In selected images are often stereotypes of Afghan women and they are portrayed as a weak and not as strong women. The images give a picture that Afghanistan women need to be saved “from something”(Shiraz F, 2011, p.81) and they are not enough strong by themselves.

The author tells that overall interviewed Afghanistan women started to be aware how women are treated in different countries and women from different backgrounds have different opinions of women´s right in Afghanistan. Interviews also show that the most important value for Muslim women is their religion. One of the women pointed out that ”religion is an important part of society. Without it, there cannot be progress.” (Shiraz F, 2011, p.86) Then came national identity, ethnic background and gender and family ranked lower. The author was surprised that women ranked family for last when men as a second most important aspect.

Interviews showed also regardless of the age or background women felt frustrated of failed programs implemented by aid institutions.  They feel that it doesn´t support all of the women. The author point out that most of the women feel that acknowledge of new rights of women show only on paper, but they can´t analyse or understand the freedom and it doesn´t show in their lives. The author analyses in the text  “Afghan women have not been given an opportunity to set their own agenda negotiate changing identities”, and this applies that maybe approaching way doesn´t work for all of the women in Afghanistan.

In my opinion text is for special audience working in the feminism interventions or interested of outside of Western world culture. As now days visual thinking is even more up it can´t be argued that media plays a big role in people´s impression of Muslim women lives. The author point out in her conclusion “it is important to understand hat nature of Afghan “feminism” may not necessarily resemble a Western model”(Shiraz F, 2011, p.90) and be aware of that is important when figuring out how to assist these women.

Wearing burka is part of Muslim women identity. They feel it protects them and they feel it gives them a freedom.  As a fashion designer I´m interested if thoese how don´t want to wear it can do it safe in Aghanistan?

Diesel´s 2013 advertaisment of denim niqab. The brand received mixed reviws of the picture. Some liked diversity of using a fashion model, contemporary styling and traditional religious article of clothing, when other felt disrespectful of using a symbolic, meaningful Islamic headpiece out of context. 

References:

Abirafeh,L. (2011) ´Gendered Aid Interventions and Afghan Women: Images versus Realities´ in Shirazi, Faegheh (ed.) Muslim Women in War and Crisis: Representation and Reality. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 77-91

Shirazi, F. (2016) Muslim women in war and crisis representation and reality edited by Faegheh Shirazi. Available at: https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/shimus (Accessed: 27 November 2016).

The university of Texas at Austin - academia.edu (2016) Available at: http://utexas.academia.edu/FaeghehShirazi (Accessed: 27 November 2016).

 Image:

Available at: http://comeintoland.tumblr.com/post/118432987972/new-post-has-been-published-on (Downloaded 28 November 2016)

The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture

The author of the article Mary Ann Bolger is a lecturer in design theory and history at Dublin Institute of Technology. She received MA from the Royal College of Art in London, where she is currently researching a PhD on topic of post-war Irish Graphic Design. Bolger is a member of the Institute of Designers in Ireland, the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design and the Design History Society. Her main research interests include typography, visual culture and the material culture of religion. (Bolger M.A. no date)

 

The book "Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity 1922-1992" was written by Linda King and Elaine Sisson. It is a collection of several essays, written from different disciplinary and academic perspectives about Irish design and its visual and material culture history. The text of the twelfth chapter "The Ephemera of Eternity: The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture", was originally written by Mary Ann Bolger. The text focuses on the design of the memorial cards. They are mass produced object intimately associated with Irish catholic mourning.

The author starts her text with describing funeral culture in Ireland. The author tells about the political uses of death and the funeral and on the folk tradition of the wake. The origins of the memorial cards came on the nineteenth century from the Netherlands to Germany and from France to the rest of Catholic Europe. They appeared for the first time in Ireland around 1870.

From the 1940’s, the memorial cards started to usually include a photograph to reflect identity of the deceased person. The author argues in the text that “memorial cards with photographs are much more complex entities than those without.” (Bolger M.A, 2011 p.242) The memorial cards help to understand of death and also how to deal with the loss.

The layouts of the memorial cards have not changed that much over the years, but new technology has modernized them. When erlier there were used potraits the author point out in the text that “today, digital technology allows fro the elimination of background detail, previously achieved by tightly cropping the photograph to face of the subject” (Bolger M.A, 2011 p.245) which makes it possible to have stylish and continuons outcome.

  

In my opinion the article is for people interested in Irish culture or religious studies, focusing on Catholic religion. The depth of the text and the way it is written would make me think it is  for specific academic audience. I also think it is for people who are interested how religion influences graphic design. 

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Fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana also borrows lot of inspiration from Catholic religion. In the Ready to Wear Fall/Winter 2013-2014 collection you can see Dolce & Gabbana using sacred mosaics of religious figures, rosaries and appropriation of the crucifix.

 

Dolce & Gabbana RTW Fall/Winter 2013-2014, inspired religious icon prints were a premonition to the recent media focus on the Catholic Church.

Reference:

Bolger, M.A. (2011) ´The Ephemera of Eternity: The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture´, in King, L and Sisson, E. (eds), Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity, 1922-1992. Cork: Cork University Press, pp.235-247.

Mary Ann Bolger (No date) Available at: http://bavacs.blogspot.co.uk/p/mary-ann-bolger.html (Accessed: 28 November 2016)

Huffpost Style (2013) Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/vogue.fr/vogue-paris-runway-report_b_2772514.html?slideshow=true#gallery/283376/0 (Accessed: 28 November 2016)

Image:

Huffpost Style (2013) Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/vogue.fr/vogue-paris-runway-report_b_2772514.html?slideshow=true#gallery/283376/0 (Downloaded: 28 November 2016)

Vogue (No date) Available at: http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2013-ready-to-wear/dolce-gabbana/slideshow/collection#2 (Downloaded: 28 November 2016)

My Body is My Manifesto!

Theresa O’Keefe is a Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. In her research, she talks about feminism, gender, social activism and radical social change. She is the author of several articles and the book "Feminist Identity Development and Activism in Revolutionary Movements" (2013).

The article "My Body is My Manifesto! SlutWalk, FEMEN and Femmenist Protest" by Theresa O’Keefe was published online in the peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journal Feminist Review in 27 of June in 2014. Using an intersectional analysis to look contemporary forms of women´s popular protest SlutWalk and FEMEN to bring questioning use of the gendered body in struggles for women´s emancipation. The author explains the importance of understanding the role of the body in movements that go against system of oppression, such as racism patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, etc. In both protests they use body as a political weapon. She explains in the text how both movements fail to ‘(re)appropriate patriarchal signifiers’ and how by failing to do that they end up reinforcing these signifiers and their associated norms.

SlutWalk and FEMEN are both driving movements of feminism. SlutWalk started After Toronto police officer suggested in talk about campus rape that to solve campus rapes would be that young women would  “avoid dressing like sluts”. People in SlutWalk protests are often dressed using sexualised items like fishnets and corsets. The author brings up the difficulties of using word slut. In the text O´keefe references to Dines and Murphy “SlutWalk might think that proudly calling themselves “sluts” is a way to empower women, they are in fact making life harder” for young girls (O´Keefe, 2014, p.7)

FEMEN group fights to protect women from repressive political regimes. Their protest tactics are getting more attention then the actual issues they seek to address. FEMEN even go further in this direction by choosing women for their protest actions, whose bodies fit the heterosexual male vision of sexy attractiveness. They are activists who resemble more of celebrity look like “mostly white, with long blonde hair, able-bodied conventionally attractive” (OKeefe, 2014, p. 8) and use their topless body as a product to sell their message.

The author criticises “both of SlutWalk and FEMEN relates to the preceding in that these ´movement´ ostensibly lack any structural analysis”.  These protests represent only part of female group. They do not give change to different cultures to be part of them as they can´t relate to way they are protesting.

In my opinion, this text is a great reading for those who are interested in feminist movements. The text gave me different aspects of the movements that I did not know about. The ideas behind the SlutWalk and the FEMEN are good, but the way they implement can make it worse, especially for young women. It is therefore essential to think about more appropriate ways of feminist self-expression and protest. As Pamela Church Gibson already broached feminism fashion design aspect and raised problematic new trend pornostyle (Church-Gibson P. 2014) and I think these feminism protest play a part in it. 

Also fashion Designers use their fahionshow for the benefit of bringing out women´s rights. Like example Karl Lagerfield did in Chanel Ready To Wear Collection Spring Summer 2015 show, where end of the fashion show models and Karl Lagerfield walk through the catwalk protesting Women´s rights.

References:

O’Keefe, T. (2014) ‘My Body is My Manifesto! Slutwalk, Femen, and Femenist Protest,’ Feminist Review, 107, pp. 1-19. 

Church-Gibson, P. (2014) ‘Pornostyle: Sexualised Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism,’ Fashion Theory, 18: 2, pp. 189-206.

Elman S. (2015) Chanel Ready To Wear Collection Spring Summer 2015 Available at: http://pinstake.com/chanel-ready-to-wear-spring-summer-2015-archives-sara-elman/aHR0cDp8fHNhcmFlbG1hbl5jb218d3AtY29udGVudHx1cGxvYWRzfDIwMTR8MTB8NDU2MzY5MDMyXmpwZw==/ (Downloaded 10 October 2016)

 

Visual Activism

The author Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is currently Deputy Director of the International Association for Visual Culture and organized its first conference in 2012. His research interests are visual culture, cultural history, disability studies, contemporary art and new media and human rights. Currently he is working on a project entitled “The Visual Commons #BlackLivesMatter”. (Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2016)

Pelican in the UK published Mirzoeff´s most recent book “How To See The World” in 2015. In chapter “Visual Activism” Mirzoeff is answering his question “So what then is visual culture now?” (2015, p. 289).  According to author visual culture might be also known as visual thinking. The author goes through how visual activism has changed form past years, he also talks about another form of it called visionary organizing and what part social media plays.

For the benefit of the general reader in it giving examples of the different scenarios of visual activism. The author argues that even the issues of identity, gender and sexual identity and how artists and filmmaker present it might be the same that in 1990 but the way how we engage them have changed. Giving example of artist who calls herself as a “black lesbian” and a “visual activist” and about her work “between the freedoms offered by South African constitution and the realities of homophobic violence encountered by LGBTQI” (2016, p. 290 ). 

The author´s tells examples of companies how try to replace labor with machines to make more profit and bring up another form of visula activism, visionary organizing. Instead of doing that visionary organizing way to think is “how we might use our creative energies to better end then cutting jobs and increasing profit” (2015, p. 295).  People around the world are trying to find to new ways to establish it. The author deduces that the reason why 24 percent of young people in Germany wanted to became artist is that “art might seem to be only way to live for yourself in global economy, as opposed to the dominant so-called ´service economy´ in which we work” (2015, p. 295).  What drives it is the constantly changing technology, which came with the new social media channels like Youtube and Snapchat. It makes possible to information to spread from country to other fast, what was´t possible in the past. The author exmaple of shooting incidend and spread slogan form scene “Hands Up, Don´t Shoot” is a good example how social media appers today.

The book has been published in 2015 and I think visual thinking will be crowing as technology evolves. Fashion designers and people part of fashion industry are a big part of visual activism and they are taking part of issues happening in world. Like example designer Sophie Theallet asked other designers to join her not to design clothes for Melania Trump to support her husband's presidential campaign. () Also Anna Wintour appeared sitting front row at multiple shows in a Marc Jacobs campaign T-shirt emblazoned with Clinton’s face.

 

References:

Mirzoeff, N. (2015) ‘Visual Activism’ How to See the World. London: Pelican Books (pp. 289-298)

Mirzoeff, N. (2016) Nicholas Mirzoeff. Available at: http://www.nicholasmirzoeff.com/bio.html (Accessed: 19 November 2016)

Available at: http://www.elle.com/fashion/celebrity-style/news/a40869/sophie-theallet-calls-on-designers-to-not-dress-melania-trump/ (Downloaded: 19 November 2016)

Available at: http://www.backstagetales.com/hillary-clintons-new-campaign-stylist/ (Downloaded: 19 November 2016)

Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism

No muscles, no tattoos

The author of the article, Alice Twemlow is co-chair of the SVA MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism in New York, and co-head of the MA in Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven. She has Ph.D from the History of Design and she is currently developing book about her doctoral thesis about the history of design criticism. She also writes and lectures on design culture, and has recently contributed essays to Graphisme en France (CNAP, 2016).

The Eye magazine has international reviews of graphic design and it is a quarterly printed magazine about graphic design and visual culture.  The article “No muscles, no tattoos” was first published in Eye magazine in no.61 vol. 16 2006 issue. In the article the author interviews Jop van Bennekom. The text tells a story behind what inspires Van Bennekom and why he felt the need to start his own magazines. The article goes through each Van Bennekom´s magazines and what the magazines are about, their layouts and their differences.  

The author explains that in 1990s magazines were invalided in Netherlands. That’s why if Van Bennekom wanted to pursuit his career choice and to stay in Netherlands he needed to start his own magazine. The article talks about Re-Magazine, which considered a different thematic lens to look at daily experiences before it changed direction to devoting every issue to one person. Butt is a sex magazine and in the article Van Bennekom told that he hoped the magazine Butt would had exist when he was 22 years old. He said in article: “Other gay magazines have cut-and-paste, retouched bodies unlike any you´ve ever seen in real life and certainly not like mine.” His last published magazine was Fantastic Man and it was a fashion magazine.

Job van Bennekom was a graphic design student at Arnhem Academy of Art and Design and was also interested about fashion, in the article he described that he got his most of inspiration from experimental work of fashion design students. He describes himself: “ I was addicted to otherness”.  When Butt began to produce a little money Van Bennekom started new fashion magazine, Fantastic man. I have been actually familiar with its sister magazine, the gentlewoman. Fantastic man was different of the other fashion magazines. The magazine is for stylish and style-conscious men in their mid-thirties. Van Bennekom says in the text: “I use Fantastic Man to meet my heroes”.  Fantastic man is very text oriented and can be really dry, but they are making sure that the people in the stories, quoting Van Bennekom are “fucking interesting”  and that makes you to want to read it.  What makes it very interesting to me is what kind of images they are using. The fashion magazine used images where men are actually smiling or showing example that they have wrinkles and people were mostly photographed in their own clothes.

In my opinion the article has been written for who are interested about graphic design and visual culture. The article faces also typical difficulties and decision making in design world.

References:

Twemlow, A. and Van Bennekom, J. (2006) ´No muscles, no tattoos,`Eye 61:16. Online. Available at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/no-muscles-no-tattoos (Accessed 11 October 2016)

(2016) http://designobserver.com/profile/alicetwemlow/103/

Available at http://67.media.tumblr.com/ac52c089f09bc4e4516111f33d1aca50/tumblr_nwzu39rlvt1rvh10go1_1280.jpg (Downloaded 13 October 2016)