Maile Naone
November 19, 2009
Intro to Womens Studies
Kabul Beauty School
This movie opened my eyes to the beauty ideals and the idea of gender in Kabul City. Being a westerner, I never fully was able to understand what gender ideals meant to Muslim societies. In the Muslim societies, men are the ones in control and women fall into the background. The Kabul Beauty School allowed women to feel beautiful and to have a self identity. This film revealed the beauty ideals of Muslim women and how gender plays out in Muslim societies and it’s disheartening that these women rely so much on beauty to have an identity.
When the Taliban took over Kabul City, they closed salons and women had to secretly own salons without them finding out. The acceptable look for men was to wear turbans and have beard and women wear burkas to cover up their bodies. In the movie, I became fully aware that men were in complete control over the women and that is completely foreign to me. The women have no control of who they want to marry because the families of the women choose who they are going to marry. Nafisa was married to her first cousin because that’s who her family chose for her to marry. With the examples in the movie, women relied on beauty to have a self identity. While the school allowed for women to have a chance at being successful, it also showed how much women rely on beauty in Muslim societies.
Beauty has different concepts and ideals in different cultures all over the world. Women in Muslim societies don’t have an identity so they rely heavily on beauty. In the Muslim societies, women only wear makeup and do their hair for weddings and special events. Women are supposed to keep their bodies covered and there’s a sense of modesty. However, Muslim women wish that they could be free like us and wear what they want and be able to express themselves freely. The society is so restricted on allowing women to express themselves and it’s very disheartening to me to see that these women rely so much on beauty. The beauty school allowed for women to have a chance to make their place in society. However, men were still upset at the school because they want to be in control and not have women in control.
The relationship between gender is not very good and is completely different from what I am used to. I would not be able to live in a society where men have complete power and women don’t have a say at all. This movie portrayed men in a very negative way and I’m sure this caused many problems after the movie was released. I feel absolutely horrible for women in Muslim societies and I only hope that one day they will be able to have their own identity. Beauty can only take these women so far with self identity because they live in a world where makeup is not entirely accepted. Deborah Rodriguez wanted to make it known to other cultures what Muslim women face on a daily basis.
Beauty holds such a high importance in Muslim societies for women. Although this school helped some women, it only drew attention to the ongoing issues in Kabul City. Not all women feel pressured to always wear the burkas anymore, but there is a pressure on women to not rely so much on beauty because men have idealistic views of the women being extremely modest. Women in Muslim societies are trapped in a box of distorted images of what it is to be beautiful and only time will tell if they can break this ongoing cycle.
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