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| This photo is from a commercial source selling hijabs for girls. |
Picking up
where I left off my previous blog about PantheaCon –
On Saturday
evening I went to a workshop called “Taking Up the Veil,” with Xochiquetzal Duti Odinsdaughter.[1] The description in the program intrigued me:
“A growing movement among pagan [sic] women is a turning towards modest
apparel, veiling, or in some way shielding the corporal body as honor to the
Divine. In this exploratory class we’ll
try some veiling techniques, discuss methodology of veiling form a Pagan
perspective[,] and some of us might even develop a deeper meaning to our
practices…”
I love veils
in general. I especially like to wear one
over my head and face when meditating or doing other ‘still’ work such as
“anchoring.”[2] I also find veils very useful in ritual when
one is embodying a divine entity; with the veil, others see no mortal
face. Not my face or your face or the
face of anyone they know in the mundane world beyond the particular sacred
circle space to which that divine entity has been called forth. Similar to working with masks, the veil both
distances and brings closer in strange ways.
This
workshop, scheduled on prime time Friday night, appealed to plenty of people,
all women, but for one brave man (presenting as a man in jeans, T-shirt,
unshaven and makeup-free), who came because he’s a cross-dressed and clothing
and adornment evidently appeal to him.
My friend Serena Toxicat
always lights up a space when she’s present, although with her uniquely Goth
approach she may be intending to darken it.
Xochiquetzal
began by speaking of modesty and dressing in solidarity with Muslim women. She mentioned how adolescent females are
excessively sexually objectified in our society, and how comforting it is to
wear loose-flowing clothing and a head covering. I completely agree with this second
point. How many of us would have
welcomed being able to hide our bodies when we were out in public as we adjusted
to its changing into that of a woman.
On her first
point, however, I have a different, and very strongly held, perspective.
Some years
ago in an online group called Our
Freedom: A Pagan Civil Rights Coalition a younger woman suggested the very
same thing, wearing head coverings in solidarity with Muslim women (at least
those who were forced to wear hijab).
Again, I am all for solidarity with oppressed sisters, but I think the
situation is more nuanced than a simple black-and-white “Let’s cover our heads
in solidarity.” After all, Roman
Catholic nuns, along with royalty throughout Europe, were compelled to cover
their heads in various ways, in the former denoting a pledge of celibacy (or
life-long virginity if it’s not too late), and in the latter, relative social
status.
To that
suggestion on that list, both Phyllis
Curott and I, who are just under a decade apart in age, objected. We felt we’d struggled too hard to free
ourselves from so many, many, many restrictions placed upon women in the
society in which we’d grown up. I grew
up wearing girdles, hose with a seam up the back, garter belts (talk about uncomfortable[3]),
shaved legs and underarms, sleeping in metal, brush, plastic, or bobby-pinned curlers.
Girl
children in my day seldom wore pants, and never were allowed to wear them to
school. Never! Dresses and skirts only. As any active person knows, dresses and
skirts can cramp you style if you’re climbing trees or playing on a play
structure. In Winter we wore two-piece
woolen snowsuits, with our skirts either tucked into the pants when we went
outdoors, thereby wrinkling, or flounced out over the bottoms like a peplum.
Modesty, a
quality Xochiquetzal rightly extolled, was something that was forced upon girls
of my generation (during and just after WW-II). Our quite necessary response was to go for
uppity (rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential).
There was
even a time in my lifetime when there
were ‘public’ places, such as restaurants, pubs, and clubs, where women were
not permitted to enter, or, if it was a really progressive place, a woman could
come in if she were accompanied by a male
patron, and even then, she had to remain seated at a table and could not
approach the bar to place an order. This
was in San Francisco, folks! And it
wasn’t all that long ago.
But back to
the workshop -- Xochiquetzal demonstrated various ways to wrap veils and
headscarves, and most of us tried those techniques. I find many ways of
dressing the head (not hair) very beautiful.
She spoke of different purposes, such as shielding the most emphatic
among us from jarring and/or toxic.
These are all good reasons. I,
however, feel confined and restricted when my head is bound. I seldom even wear hats, except for
protection from sun and sometimes rain.
But sometimes I do wear veils, as I mentioned above.
She also
spoke a bit about the sexuality implied in hair, especially thick, long
tresses. For much of my adult life I
wore my hair long, and I felt it to be very sexual, though I liked it for other
aesthetic reasons as well. I made do
with tying it back on the nape of my neck when I was doing things it interfered
with. I loved all this talk.
There was
one woman there who seemed to bring with her something of a party attitude, as
she frequently interrupted Xochiquetzal’s talking, and others who tried to
speak. She may have been ‘three sheets
to the wind,’ I’m not sure. In any case,
the presenter handled these interruptions gracefully.
This
workshop discussion underscores the value of, and need for, increased and more
frequent inter-generational conversation about our worlds and our Paganisms.
Highlight
Which brings
me to the real highlight, for me, of my having attended this workshop.
Understand
that I’d come to PCon after a drastic disaffiliation from my ‘home community’
and another set of misunderstandings/disapprovals over the past year-plus, so
I’ve been processing those changes and contemplating what my place might be, if
any, in the Pagan world I love so much.
At one point
Xochiquetzal recognized my raised hand, so I began to speak and was
interrupted. She then stated to the
group something complimentary about me.
I was amazed! I didn’t even know
she’d any idea of who I am. But she did,
and she said it loud and clear. It sure
felt good to hear her speak. Not only
was this incident a highlight of Xochiquetzal’s workshop; for me it was a
blazing highlight of the whole Con.
I’m thinking
of a possibility we’d both articulated at the time, that we might have a
mutually enlightening conversation about the matter of veils, along
generational lines. I could even see a
colloquy between us that could be formatted into a more formal article.
[1] Gods, what a splendid name!
[2] A sort of dropping-and-centering awareness
technique used in some larger rituals to help maintain the focus of everyone
present on the larger working of the group; something like a tent pole (holding
the space up) and/or pegs (keeping the space anchored and contained).
[3] None of this even begins to address the
advances made in menstrual care products.
Some methods used before the advent of sanitary pads that adhere to
one’s underwear were downright tortuous!
