In contemporary debates, the full-face veil is frequently presented as a medieval practice. And yet, in a supreme irony, the contemporary European response to the full-face veil can itself be seen as "medieval". (Malik, 2013).
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After five days of fashion shows in the capital, here is the word from the catwalks. Drop these phrases into your conversation and everyone will know you were on the front row. Even if you weren't (Cartner-Morley, 2013f). This collection was about flowers. "But when I say flowers – I'm not going to do, you know, roses, done to death, blah blah blah." Instead, it was "the sexual undertones of flowers", of anatomy and deflowering, which formed the starting point for the clothes. A visit to his Scottish high school brought back memories of art classes spent dissecting, examining and drawing buttercups and carnations. "I started thinking about how much we take flowers for granted, and how incredible they are, and how the female sexual organs have so much in common with the internal structure of a flower. When I was growing up, my mum always used 'flower' as her word for vagina – it's a Scottish thing. I prefer sex to be an undertone in my clothes, rather than too obvious, so I was interested in how flowers are graphic but concealed and suggestive at the same time." (Cartner-Morley, 2013e). It is worth noting Muslims make up only around 4.8% of the UK population – and it has been estimated that only a tiny percentage of that population veils their face. (Cochran, K. 2013a). Browne said he was "instinctively uneasy" about restricting religious freedoms, but said there may be a case to act to protect girls who were too young to decide for themselves whether they wished to wear the veil or not. (Browne in Press Association, 2013b) “At her age there should be more to life than buying clothes.” (Brookner, 1985, p.96). I have always believed one should allow people to make their own decisions about what they see, hear and do within the law. With porn, though, it is not so much the sex, as the fact that it is full of images of hatred and abuse of women, and, overwhelmingly, about the depiction of women as sex objects. (Lott, 2013b). As teenagers increasingly learn about sex from pornography, their sexual norms change. I sat with a group of boys who, when asked about where they imagined ejaculating, took more than 20 minutes and considerable prompting to come up with a word that indicated vagina. "In the face", "over the tits", "up the arse" and "blow job" came to their minds immediately – they were all 15. One young woman had only ever been "in love" online, but had worked as an escort from the age of 17. She was one of many who confided that, though they could perform a whole series of sexual acts confidently, they felt inhibited about making themselves vulnerable emotionally. "Porn is great and it's free but it ruins love for us all," said one 15-year-old boy ruefully. (Kidron, 2013). The fact that men are feeling increasingly insecure about their physical appearance is borne out by a number of studies. Last year, for example, the YMCA revealed that 38% of men questioned said that they would sacrifice a year of their life if it meant that they could have the perfect body. (Cosslett, 2013c). Such is the level of concern that the BFC has made education the primary message of this LFW. "Our world-famous fashion colleges play a key role in what makes British fashion fantastic," says chief executive Caroline Rush. "When you talk to [star designer] Jonathan Saunders, he is very frank and straightforward that he wouldn't have been able to become a designer if he had been faced with the fees now being charged. We are really concerned that fees, and the cost of living in London where many colleges are based, will prevent the next generation of talented British students from non-privileged backgrounds from coming through." (Cartner-Morley, 2013d). |
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