Everything wrong with this “costume”; a thread 🧵
This thread will b focusing ONLY on this costume. There are many ways that women in swana are sexualized and fetishized and this is only one of them.
If you wanna learn about orientalism in depth, read orientalism by Edward Said. orientalism is a "created body of theory and practice" which constructs images of the Orient or the East directed toward those in the West.
Representations of the East as exotic, feminine, weak and vulnerable reflect and define how the West views itself as rational, masculine and powerful. These can be seen in paintings as well as media.
For starters, women in swana have different types of cultural and traditional clothing, none of them wear wht im abt to talk about. the harem trope is VERY popular and ppl dont realize how normalized it is
The west have been portraying women in swana as exotic, submissive and sexual objects since forever, whenever someone talks about this it’s shut down very quickly. Ppl think this is how we dress, but its not. these costumes are just the product of a white man fantasy.
u find this clothing everywhere in media (songs, film, cartoons, tv shows….etc). if u google any show or cartoon w the word “arab” ur most likely gonna get the characters in this type of clothing, which isnt a representation of our diverse cultures.
When they french colonized Algeria photographers would pay or force Algerian women to participate in the fantasies they had of them. They would make the backgrounds look like they were in the harem and they would give them sexualized clothing to wear.
The clothing was a mix of south asian cultural elements(?), which is why u see some characters w binidis, with dancers clothing in swana countries, and Persian pants (called harem pants, which is wrong for obvious reasons).
“Harem pants” come from traditional pants called “Sirwal” which are of Persian origin and şalvar which are of Turkish origin. “Harem women” & this clothing created the stereotype that women r married to a rich & powerful man, a sultan. in which the sultan would have many wives.
This costume till this day gets praise form everyone. it’s inherently bad and is the reason why we’re still fetishized and sexualized. Ppl refuse to have this convo and acknowledge that many shows and films from the childhood participated in the sexualization of swana women.
This image and clothing still exists till this day, as i mentioned u can find it anywhere.
More examples for education purposes
The brides of dracula in the vampire movie “Van helsing” are not of arab origin but because he has multiple wives they are are dressed in harem clothing. This is different from other women in the film who are dressed in more european inspired wear.
I’ve talked ab oreintalism and the issues surrounding the representation of ppl in swana more in this thread
https://twitter.com/ARABD0LL/status/1643606923911069700
more resources: journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations…
feel free to add more examples!!
Also, “harem pants” was used by white women for feminist purposes but swana women were inherently fetishized for wearing it. A persian girl wearing those pants will be seen as a sexy genie or whtever anuraag-shukla.medium.com/how-harem-pant…
This link is for educational purposes, its not accurate and “harem pants” were only de-sexulized on white womens bodies, never on brown women. They also shouldn’t b called harem pants (racist history)
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