Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving Sunaina Mair Analysis

There are numerous objects in our lives that demonstrate social relations and how different people may view either the objects or those using the objects. For one thing, articles of clothing are something that many people use as a way to define an individual when in social environments. This typically, will affect our relations directly because it changes the power of a person and the article of clothing from person to person, which leads to different judgement of individuals. Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving by Lila Abu-Lughod and Identity Dub: The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth Subculture (New York Remix) by Sunaina Maira are two texts that demonstrate this very concept. In discussing objects and social relations, we learn a lot

When an Indian-American youth wore mehndi or a bindi, they probably wore it to feel empowered by their Indian roots and traditions despite the influence they might also face from American culture. When a celebrity like Gwen Stefani wore these items, she did this to contribute to her image of a 90’s rebel girl who was dating an Indian man (Tony Kanal). It is no coincidence that as soon as the early 2000’s were over and so was her relationship with Tony, that she stopped wearing a bindi and mehndi, while also starting to “appreciate” harajuku girls; Indian-American culture wasn’t the brand people were buying into anymore. The power of Hollywood making items like mehndi and bindis a marketable item that you can brand, just goes to show you that social relations in regards to objects. The power and meaning an object might give an individual really depends on who is wearing the items and who decides what they mean to/on certain

In this text, Abu-Lughod analyzes muslim women, their burqas, and their relation to the United States. Within the text, the United States seems to call for the “freeing” of Afghan women during the time of the war. More specifically, there is a call out by politicians to free or liberate Afghan women by freeing them of cover, or their wear burqas. For some reason, Americans viewed the burqa and women of cover as individuals being forced to live this way. The United states was very quick to deem this article of dressing as an article that took away power from Afghan women. Laura Bush even goes as far as saying that Afghan women were rejoicing at their new found freedom from the veil. The problem here is, Americans never asked or considered how this women may feel about their burqas or cover. The United States and people like Laura Bush took it upon themselves to make Muslim women seem as though they needed saving from their cover and yet, these women never even asked for that. The power of the burqa in this situation is viewed as oppression because the United States made it an object that means these women have less power not only in their country, but as “people who needed saving” by the United