In 2007, hairdresser Deborah Rodriguez published a memoir of her experience in Afghanistan. Despite the cringe-inducing subtitle — An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil — the book itself, Kabul Beauty School, isn’t bad. (Interestingly, the book goes by a different subtitle in the U.K., The Art of Friendship and Freedom.)
Rodriguez is moved to travel to Afghanistan and help when she hears about the war and suffering of women. She has a second motive: to get away from her abusive husband. Surrounded by nurses and physicians, she soon begins to feel useless. A hairdresser, she has no extensive training for dealing with disasters. But skilled hairdressers, it turns out, are short in supply and greatly in demand. Rodriguez is greeted with excitement by Westerners and Afghans alike. (The book is rather stereotypical, not surprisingly, in its definition of femininity — nails, makeup, hair-dye — but even some men wish to get their hair cut.) Noting the lack, Rodriguez helps establish a school for training future hairdressers. Throughout the process, Rodriguez familiarizes herself with Afghan culture and customs and creates a new life for herself.
Rodriguez doesn’t turn to an East-West binary. She makes friends and finds an Afghan husband (in an arranged marriage). While the power men hold over the lives of some of the women she meets is more extreme than legally possible in the United States, Rodriguez can relate. She herself faced an abusive husband, and this background, which she retells, makes it easy for her and the reader to understand the women she meets. She shows the hardships they face with otherizing them — painting a respectful portrait of their emotional strength and endurance. She says, “I’ve been blessed with family, and I’m rich—especially rich—in sisters. I sometimes wonder if I’ve done as much for them as they’ve done for me” (269). She resists the tendency to conform Afghan women to American standards in an effort to help them. She notes that helping Afghan women is not as straightforward as Westerners think: “It takes a long time to understand how the complexities of these women’s lives differ from the complexities of ours. Sometimes she can’t help, even when understand these complexities” (259).
Despite the political context of the situation — an American woman in Afghanistan at the start of an American-led “War on Terror” — the book is free of politics. Rodriguez takes no sides. There is a mention of the war in Iraq, but only because it relates to the delayed shipping of supplies to Afghanistan. Focusing on the lives of women, the book leaves political discourse for other books to take on. It’s fortunate, because comments like this — “I still wonder if that videotape will show up on Aljazeera television someday, as evidence that American hairdressers are torturing Afghan men” — make me think Rodriguez wouldn’t be the best person to analyze the political backdrop.
Similarly, Rodriguez does not spend much time on religion. She notes Islamic practices and her Christian faith when they come up, but they are not a large part of the book. She never colors Islam as the source of all problems, but some comments are questionable. She writes, “Even though Roshanna’s parents weren’t deeply conservative Muslims, they wanted to see their country return to normal, and the Taliban seemed determined to make this happen.” Is being a “deeply conservative Muslim” equivalent to supporting the Taliban? That’s troubling.
The writing is straightforward and readable, although somewhat disjointed and not terribly sophisticated. At 270 pages, it’s easy to read in a day or two. Overall, it’s an worthwhile read, portraying Afghan women from a rare angle.
Note: The story may not be all it appears to be; see criticism here.
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“She resists the tendency to conform Afghan women to American standards in an effort to help them.”I’ve noticed that, on this blog, any notion of what is good for women produced by a western person is cast into disrepute. what “complexities” are we talking about here? sometimes this blog posits that all women in the world are the same, and that to suggest otherwise would be “othering” them; while at other times it seems like you think Muslim women have SPECIAL needs. like what? is it just that you object to right being forced on them by American invaders? assuming we all agree on what women need – and i think there are a core set of rights that women are agreed to deserve – why should we question whence they came? How well did local women do? They had lots and lots of time to work out for themselves how to get educational rights, employment rights, equal treatment under the laws really. but patriarchy proved really hard to shake and the Taliban didn’t seem to care. assuming the american invasion of iraq hadn’t happened….where would afghani women be now? no place good. and it’s not better throughout the middle east.i’m not suggesting we need white people to come and save us all by bombing the hell out of us. but by rejecting every advance western feminism has made just because they weren’t made by Muslims seems harmful. women DO, YES THEY DO, have more rights in the western world than they do anywhere, and we would do well to take any aid we can get in getting SOMEWHERE. oh yes, there are women workingon it from within; but they’re not doing well. the massive weight of patriarchy and sexism and people who use Islam to promote these things make it difficult.
Assalamu alaikom,Could you elaborate on the criticism for those of us without NY Times accounts? I’m so intensely curious now, because I’ve been meaning to learn more about this story. Am I wrong in thinking that there is a documentary that accompanies this book? Perhaps I’m thinking of something else. Anyway, thank you for the review!
Forsoothsayer,I agree with you about women’s rights, so I think I should clarify. It is not the Westernness itself that is wrong. The line about not conforming Afghan women to Western standards refers to the need to contextualize the issues and consider the cultural differences, instead of assuming that all women want to (or even are able to) throw their circumstances and backgrounds away and become American women. Of course there are aspects of being a woman in America that are sorely needed in Afghanistan, and Rodriguez shows that. The problem is when writers go in with the idea “Everything Western is good; everything (in this case) Afghan is bad” — and ditto for the reverse. There are certainly core values and rights that every woman deserves, they are not patented American trademarks that come with the complete American identity.I strongly disagree with your observation that “on this blog, any notion of what is good for women produced by a western person is cast into disrepute.” MMW has criticized and has supported both Western and non-Western viewpoints on women when appropriate.
I think we need to dissect the connotations of “western”, too. Like Melinda said, it’s not western-ness that’s the problem, it’s the perspective of that western person. Often, white, middle-class feminism is conflated with “western” feminism–and often, the perspectives of white, middle-class, non-Muslim women don’t take into account the perspectives, needs, and issues that apply to non-western, non-white Muslim women. This is what I have a problem with.
interesting comments ladies. i haven’t read the book myself, but i still feel, as a general rule, that while Muslim women may not have the same perspectives, they have the same needs and issues as other women around the world. in what way would the American/western idea of women’s rights not work for Muslim women, prima facie? this is what i don’t get. i can identify no area, to my mind, where the american understanding and implementation of women’s rights would not be to the benefit of women everywhere, even while i find many other aspects of American culture personally repugnant and detrimental. it’s just a personal opinion difference, i suppose. i never bought into the perspectives introduced by the various women’s studies classes about different, race-based feminisms. i think all women everywhere need and deserve the same things, the sort of things most Western women are entitled to. Given them, they are free to order their lives how they choose.
forsoothsayer:”i never bought into the perspectives introduced by the various women’s studies classes about different, race-based feminisms.”So interesting that I would read this as I take a break from a presentation I’ve been working on for a few days. A presentation on how when conducting violence against women research among minority women considerations which are not taken for “mainstream” White women must be taken into account. So I can tell you, from all my readings, that indeed race based feminisms are necessary. Mainstream feminism has ignored the differences of minority women and this has resulted in minority women being neglected and marginalized. Not very feminist indeed. Within North America, it is often forgotten that minority women experience life, therefore oppression, in different ways. Black feminists will tell you that when White feminists have conducted research on women in general they have not taken into account the racism that Black women feel. This translates to other women of colour as well. This racism is central to many women of colour’s lives. To not take it into account is to not really look at their issues. Immigrant women do not experience life in the same way either. Often faced with language barriers, lack of access to services, lack of family support to which they may be used to, racism from mainstream society etc the experiences of these MUST be analysed apart from those of White women who never experience those obstacles living in a North American culture. While White, middle class women face sexism, minority women face many other oppressions – racism, homophobia, classism etc. To address one without the other is just not possible. At least not if one wants to do justice to women. And in terms of women in other parts of the world – the role of colonialism, international racism, Western supremacy, and Western interference (ie US’s role in the creation of the Taliban resulting in the subordination of women; or US support of Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan in the 80′s who brought about the horrendous hadood ordinance)have all to be considered. These make the situations of women in other countries different thus requiring their own attention. I highly recommend works by Sherene Razack, Kimberle Crenshaw, bell hooks, and Uma Narayan. They will be able to explain these things in a much more eloquent manner. I don’t know if I made sense or not but in the end I just want to say that one feminism does not fit all.
Duniya, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Eyes serene, the NYT piece highlights grievances from the other women who founded the beauty school in Kabul (other American and Afghan women were responsible for the creation of this school).
Salaams,I read the book some time ago and was completely disgusted. Rodriguez does indeed paint herself as the great white savior (the women at the school called her “Miss Debbie, while she referred to them by their first names, cementing the notion of her superior civilization). At the same time, she portrays the Afghan women as guileless children who spent all their time crying on the shoulder of Savior Debbie.Rodriguez herself admitted that the story was embellished, but some of the passages are so pathetically cliched that it’s difficult to imagine them outside a Lifetime movie script. In one of the opening vignettes, the author has herself attending a wedding. The putative bride has confided in Rodriguez (within minutes of their first meeting, apparently) that she is not a virgin. Shortly after the wedding couple go upstairs to consummate the marriage, relatives rush to Rodriguez, saying the couple needs her help (right, that’s totally what would happen if an Afghani couple had trouble having sex for the first time). Rodriguez counseled bride and groom separately (riiiight), and found the trouble to be the bride’s fear at being discovered to be a non-virgin. So the author saves the day by cutting her hand and smearing the blood in the appropriate spot. Day saved. Seriously, does anyone truly believe that a foreigner, especially a newly arrived one, would be the go-to person in such a case? Or that the bride’s mother, or the bride herself wouldn’t know how to deal with this age-old dilemma (via chicken blood,usually)?In another passage, an Afghani woman in her 40s covers her ears and screams when first she sees a hair dryer. A woman who has supposedly spent her life in Kabul. Now, apparently Rodriguez doesn’t know this, but Kabul before around the mid ’80s was a pretty modern city, hair dryers and all, so it’s not likely that any woman of that age would be so terrified by a small electrical applianceThe entire story highlights the worst of Orientalist attitudes in a condescending an sensationalist package. Rodriguez may have had good intentions, but the fact that she fled what she describes as a miserable personal life for Afghanistan leads me to believe that she did so in part so that she could finally feel superior to someone.
Even though Roshanna’s parents weren’t deeply conservative Muslims, they wanted to see their country return to normal, and the Taliban seemed determined to make this happen.” Is being a “deeply conservative Muslim” equivalent to supporting the Taliban? That’s troubling.Excuse me if I am somehow misreading this, but I thought that this sentence was saying that even though Roshanna’s parents were not deeply conservative Muslims, they still supported the Taliban (who at least presented themselves as being deeply conservative Muslims)because they thought they would return normalcy to the country…or some version thereof. I don’t think it is weird to imply that deeply conservative Muslims would be more likely to support an organization that presents itself as the guardians of a more conservative type of morality, lifestyle, etc.