Iraqi Women

As a male, with limited data on what it's like to be a woman to begin with, I can only imagine how I cannot imagine what it's like to be a female in Iraq. Put in a position of family service without exception, the girl who's dressed and ornamented so everyone can get a good look at her before she's cloaked at puberty and offered up to an arranged marriage that works primarily as a business transaction is something I cannot fathom.

I've heard comments here and back home on how unattractive the Arab women are.

"No wonder they mak'em cover their faces..."

But my theory is this: if any woman in this world were subjected to staying home, making babies, cooking, staying inside, with no personal, social or spousal incentive to maintain an appearance like what we consider attractive in the west, then any woman probably wouldn't put much work into her "looks" when it has nothing to do with the world she lives in and her future in it.


For me there's no doubt the women here are beautiful in the physical sense, and in the deeper human aspect as I've seen the children and internally and externally there's nothing to keep hidden other than that same innocent essence that makes them beautiful.

The tradition of cloaking the women who are married or of an age in which they are designated to be married off originates in Islam where the Koran warns of dangers in the power contained in a woman's hair exposed et cetera. But the deeper source is the male dominated societies fear of that same power and how women in the west seem to have run amok with their independence. This perceived western independence of media driven make-up, perpetual Sweet 16, double D implant, MTV mini-skirt "beauty" is its own prison. But that's another blog post for another time.