Flirty burqas

[Free Capitalist 0]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitge...,537517,00.html

Lifting the Veil Using a 'Bluetooth Burqa'

Can a burqa be sexy? A Berlin-based artist has invented a digitally-enabled robe that will send an image of a woman's face -- or anything else -- via Bluetooth.

Women who would rather not wear a burqa can now slip around it electronically.

A burqa may not be the flirtiest garment ever invented for women. The highly modest head-to-toe robe even shrouds the eyes, so for centuries it's been difficult for women wearing them to send suggestive signals to men.

But now a German designer has debuted a digitally-enabled burqa that can broadcast a photo of the wearer to nearby mobile phones. Markus Kison calls it the "CharmingBurka," and says it isn't forbidden by Islamic law.

A model demonstrated a prototype of Kison's garment at the Seamless 2008 design and fashion show in Boston, a high-tech fashion event run with support from the Masschusetts Institute of Technology.

Kison says the burqa has a "digital layer" that incorporates a Bluetooth antenna, which lets women "decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually." Nearby mobile phones that also use Bluetooth will light up with any small file a woman chooses to broadcast as her identity -- a photo, a cartoon, a text file or even a sound clip.

Kison's broadcast technology started as a marketing tool; the so-called "Bluebot" system is meant to send digital advertisements to passing phones. But Kison's new design turns a burqa into a walking MySpace page.

A broadcasting burqa may not be explicitly forbidden by Islamic law -- since most interpreters of Shariah have never imagined such a thing -- but certain Islamic governments have tried to clamp down on electronic flirting. By 2002 it was so common for teenagers in Saudi Arabia to send each other pictures of themselves by phone that an import ban was imposed on camera phones. But demand was so high that the law was lifted two years later.

[Capitalism Forever 0]

Markus Kison calls it the "CharmingBurka," and says it isn't forbidden by Islamic law.

It may not be forbidden by the Koran, but I wouldn't be surprised if it caused some riots, burned embassies, and the like, and I certainly think it's advisable for Markus to take some measures with regard to his personal security...

[Tito 0]

What a laughable farce!

[alann 0]

Wait a minute, here! Who said that a woman can't be flirty in a burka without electronics?

[RayK 0]

Wait a minute, here! Who said that a woman can't be flirty in a burka without electronics?

If that is what is considered flirty, then I must be way off on my understanding of flirty. I thought being a flirt meant acting like your cared or loved someone without any intention of going any further. How would anyone even know the woman was acting like a flirt when they cannot see a thing?

[PhilO 0]

Wait a minute, here! Who said that a woman can't be flirty in a burka without electronics?

Looking at that "ad" makes me wonder if there's been an unintentional positive cultural effect from the Iraq/Afghanistan war: hundreds of thousands of young Americans getting a firsthand look at evil, stone-age religious societies (unfortunately without any philosophic guidance to fully grasp what they're seeing and why it's such a stark contrast to America.)

[alann 0]

Wait a minute, here! Who said that a woman can't be flirty in a burka without electronics?

If that is what is considered flirty, then I must be way off on my understanding of flirty. I thought being a flirt meant acting like your cared or loved someone without any intention of going any further. How would anyone even know the woman was acting like a flirt when they cannot see a thing?

Well, yeah! That was the joke... and why the first tag line is "I am winking at you." Who the hell would know?

Burkas are an unintentional admission of gross insecurity and need for totalitarian control on the part of the men in those societies. It is emblematic of the problem. As you say, flirting exists when women are free to express their self-confidence and sexuality in a society that defends their rights. Firting is overt acknowledgement of sexual attraction by an independent woman without strings attached and is therefore an abomination in those societies. For the men, that would mean that women actually have a say in the selection -- and, by extension the rejection -- of a mate. They could never allow that.

The "market" for those "flirty burkas," if there actually ever is one, would be appeasment-minded surrender-monkey westerners who want to show their solidarity with the threatening, scary Islamists, while still living the lives they're used to -- a contradiction they refuse to see or understand.

[Cometmaker 0]

The "market" for those "flirty burkas," if there actually ever is one, would be appeasment-minded surrender-monkey westerners who want to show their solidarity with the threatening, scary Islamists, while still living the lives they're used to -- a contradiction they refuse to see or understand.

I appreciated the joke, but I don't agree with this last assessment. Looking at the market for flirty hijabs, there is a huge market as one of the few ways for females in Muslim countries to express themselves, and to individualize. The psychological effect for females is to make everything anti-life feel cozy and somehow part of the natural order of things. I would say this extends to burqas. As an aside, for westerners like me who had no choice but to live throughout the Middle East and Africa as a youngster, the acceptability of different types of materials, colours and patterns ("flirty") at least made it easier to pretend a shawl or a scarf was a hijab for my own protection.

[alann 0]

... Looking at the market for flirty hijabs, there is a huge market as one of the few ways for females in Muslim countries to express themselves, and to individualize. The psychological effect for females is to make everything anti-life feel cozy and somehow part of the natural order of things. I would say this extends to burqas. As an aside, for westerners like me who had no choice but to live throughout the Middle East and Africa as a youngster, the acceptability of different types of materials, colours and patterns ("flirty") at least made it easier to pretend a shawl or a scarf was a hijab for my own protection.

That's an interesting perspective, but it's still very sad. This reminds me of a Norwegian socialist on the train I took to Berlin in '89, when the wall was coming down. A bunch of us in the jammed cabin were excited about history being made. We talked right through the night about, among other things, the miserable poverty over there in East Berlin. This Norwegian guy was talking about how he felt bad for the impending loss of the "feeling of community" that he experienced while over there: "If one guy found a store where they had a chicken, he and others could take turn waiting in line for the chicken, and he'd tell other people, or he'd bring it home and invite everyone over and there'd be a big party..."

It is sad when reduced circumstances, caused by oppression, make the smallest thing a cause for joy. I get joy from a really good roast chicken, but mine I just brought home tonight from the supermarket, one of many, steaming hot and about 7 bucks. And I didn't wait 3 hours in line for it. Some interviewer on NPR asked the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky if he felt his work was deeper because of the deprivation he suffered under the Soviet system. Did he create better, more meaningful work? "No," he said. He said that he would have written more and written better had he not been constantly hungry, constantly afraid of the censors, worried about the most basic survival.

I will accept your first-hand knowledge of such little things such as a a prettier fabric for your shawl as an opportunity to make things cozier in an adverse environment, but it is very sad that these women have to find these "underground" outlets for aesthetic pleasure and self-expression. It is a depressing world they live in and you apparently experienced first-hand. And, as you say, you wore a scarf for your own protection. I presume that protection was not strictly from the weather. Sad.

[MissLee 0]

Sad, indeed.