Gracie Miller's response: The Other Side of the Veil

In the article The Other Side of the Veil, two opposing viewpoints from north-African Muslim women in France are presented on whether girls should be allowed to wear the veil in schools, or not.  To be honest the whole time I was reading this article I kept thinking that it was interesting that this article is written about an issue in France, and yet it was interesting that many of the reactions seemed to call for almost an American way of doing things.  I have taken French since I was in third grade, all the way through the end of high school, in my years studying the language and culture of France, many distinctions between the “western” ideal as opposed to a French or American ideal became clear.  While the countries that make up the “west” in general share many gender norms and business ideals, each country definitely has its own version of these generalizations and its own personality.  Whereas America is more on the first side of the views presented, where the young people felt that all should be equal in public schools between the religions; and that France needed to adapt to their cultural values and religious beliefs because that was only fair, seeing as the first group were mostly second generation immigrants who were born and raised in France.  This view of idealized equality and a country shifting with the changes called for by the individuals that live in it, struck me as an “American” thought process; where change and individualization were at the forefront.  Whereas the second viewpoint seemed more inline with the traditional French belief that France has its own unique culture and traditions and that other traditions are welcome in the private sphere but not in the public sector.  French thoughts on immigration are all about preserving the traditional culture of France, seemingly against the new cultures that are immigrating to France all the time.  While racist and disturbing, the French behavior towards the veiling in schools is not surprising to me. 

            A sentence that really jumped out at me when reading this article was: “Meaning is not inherent in objects but, rather, is socially constructed around them” (Best 1998).  This sentence surmised what the whole article seemed to be about, that two different cultures that originated in different societies, with differing views and social norms were trying to exist together in the same space. Yet, though the people were not inherently different, their views ranged and that this came to a head on the issue of the veils.  This article brought up the fact that while each society has gender norms, that societies are partial to their own gender norms.  The fact that at the heart of this issue is the idea that maybe one culture does not want to trade one gender norm for another, or have another culture dictate what their gender norm is acceptable is interesting.  This article highlighted the fact that gender views and societal norms are personal and therefore protected, it is only when these views and norms are somehow alienated from a person, that they see them as other and unimportant.