Ugly On The Inside

France just started enforcing it's "burqa ban" which prohibits people from publicly wearing anything that covers their faces. Personally, I think that's just plain silly. If the goal is punishing those who would oppress other people, why would you penalize the people that you think are being oppressed? I'm an enlightened white middle class lady. I listen to NPR. There are women who choose to wear the burqa! I know because I heard them on the radio!  Some because it's a way to display their faithfulness, and some because it also makes them feel safe. I can't blame them for that. It's hard to know, as a woman, what attributes of ours are being judged, and it's hard to gauge, as a person, just how fair minded you are being in judging someone else.

I move that we all start to wear burqas. For most of my youth and adolescents I felt ugly, and awkward, and judged. I knew I was smart, I knew that I could accomplish things well, and I knew that none of that was appreciated by my peers. They saw the gangly girl with the feathered bangs and impressive overbite that only WAY too many years of thumb sucking can impart, and that was that. I'm sure my titanic inability to interact socially was also a factor, but still. I was miserable, and largely because of the way that I thought others perceived the way that I looked.

If we had all been covered up from head to foot maybe I would have been more confident and proud of what I could do, and would have correlated that sooner with who I was.

Now I've grown out of most of that, and have developed an outsized and self depreciating sense of humor that keeps those sort of barbs at bay. Now, other people find me to be not hideous, and sometimes pleasing to look at. Mostly though, I feel like an ugly girl, when I really think about it. I feel like I have to work extra hard to make sure that what I do well is noticed and appreciated. Then I wonder, do people who have always been appreciated for their looks feel the same way? Do they worry that because they are pretty, people don't expect them to be smart or successful? Do they worry that what they have achieved may not be entirely based on what they can do?
Probably.

Orchestras now hold blind auditions. Before they started having the musicians (each assigned a number so that the judges couldn't see the names) play behind a curtain for their audition women in professional orchestras were hard to find. After the audition process changed, and applicants were judged entirely on their abilities, and not on their appearance, the number of women in orchestras rose dramatically. I think we should all have the chance to play behind the curtain. Don't you want to know how your skills are valued on their own? That's what you've worked for, isn't it? To gain and refine those skills, whatever they are? Wouldn't it be nice to know that any achievements you have earned, or been passed over for, were entirely based on the merits of your skill set? I think so. Which means I reject Frances new law, and hereby request that we all, men, women, and children, start wearing the burqa.