Itisi

Boudicca, I pity the fool who told her to put a shirt on.

This was supposed to be a more cheerful post, but it’s gone a bit ranty – although, I have tried to be amusing, here and there. Sorry about that, but I’m really quite irked – and appear to be channeling an inner Emmeline Pankhurst.

A quick quiz for you, Dear Reader. It’s a spot-the-odd-one-out type of thing.

• Oliver Cromwell
• Nicolas Sarkozy
• Henry VIII

OK, which one is it?

If you said a or b, you’d be wrong. The odd one out is actually c. HenryVIII. Despite being a serial adulterer with a penchant for lopping the heads off superfluous wives, Henry was pretty relaxed about how women dressed. Cromwell famously banned any hint of ankle*, but did at least have an excuse what with being (more than) a little mad. I’m not entirely sure what Sarkozy’s rationale is, if he has one, maybe he too has boarded a fast train to Barmyland. If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, it’s this**, Sarko’s great new plan to win friends and influence reluctant voters by telling women what they can wear***.

The argument for the ban seems to be based around the idea that women who wear them are forced to cover up. Maybe so, but I’m struggling to understand how forcing them to uncover really helps, because a man who has cowed his wife so much he even gets to choose what she wears, is not going to have a problem with confining her to house when she can’t comply.

Surely, if women are being subjugated to this extent, they are likely to be subjected to other abuses too. Surely, the most helpful course of action would be to offer these women a way to escape the people who are abusing them, not to make them prisoners in their own homes, where they will have less chance of communicating with the people who could help them. To me, this is the equivalent of enacting a law that bans women from appearing in public with black eyes, instead of tackling the domestic violence that causes the black eyes in the first place.

Putting that to one side: this is a French law, but there are calls for a similar thing this side of the Channel, something I feel deeply uncomfortable about. The government should not be telling women how to dress. Nor should they be listening to anyone who suggests it, whether it’s Little Englanders demanding a burka ban, or radical feminists**** railing against high heeled shoes. The idea of the state legislating on what women can and can not wear is disturbing, and downright insulting. Insulting because it implies we need to be protected from ourselves; disturbing because if we accept governments impinging on our right to choose our own clothing, in what other ways will they decide to do our thinking for us?

I can honestly say that if a burka ban ever comes into force in this country I will start wearing one (with high heels), just to be awkward.

* I think officially this was for religious reasons, but I suspect he actually had a thing about ankles and couldn’t help coming over all unnecessary whenever he spotted one.

** You may already have heard, but I’ve been dealing with the whole multiple bereavement thing recently so I’m a bit out of the loop.

*** Ironic when you consider this is a man who thinks 50′s style stacked heels make for a really good look. Seriously Sarko they don’t, not unless you are being ironic, and even then . . . Maybe French women should give him a taste of his own medicine. They could assemble a crack squad, headed by Catherine Deneuve, who’d kidnap Sarko and take him to central Paris. Once there, he would be forced to parade around the boulevards clad in garments from one of those catalogues aimed at old men – these delightful slacks for example.

**** As far as I know, they haven’t actually called for a ban, but high heels are a hugely contentious issue amongst feminists, often likened to a modern form of foot binding and called a “visible symptom of the overarching influence of the patriarchy and it’s continuing subjugation of women”. I’ve heard several variations on that theme, my response has always been the same: you can’t walk in them can you? That really, really annoys them.