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PARTISAN REVIEW
spotted the safety pins with which Hobson, unused to this garment,
had to hold it together. Hobson was now an incorrectly attired na–
tive instead of an uncategorizably attired Westerner.
Reports of traditional women trying to talk the Western woman
out of her voluntary gesture of conformity are frequent in the litera–
ture.
It
seems that traditional women, far from feeling more com–
fortable at such a gesture, actually feel ill at ease when confronted by
an outsider wearing their clothes.
In
traditional society, clothing is
very much linked to status and position, and there is no suitable cos–
tume for her position. An educated foreign woman running about in
a farm woman's clothes does not put the farm woman at ease and
may, in fact, offend her propriety more than if she were wearing her
own clothes or, best of all, a costume meeting local rules of modesty
but constructed out of her own clothing. Another problem is that tra–
ditional women's clothes are not always easy to wear, and it may not
be a simple matter for an outsider to pick up the nuances of how to
drape which cloth in the company of which people in which situa–
tions and at what times of the day.
Besides blending into the landscape in terms of clothes and out–
ward appearance, social researchers of this new school of thought also
strive to avoid showing any reaction that could be construed as a crit–
icism or as disapproval. They try to remain passive instruments seek–
ing only to learn and record alien customs without getting involved
in assessments or discussions or comparisons. This effort proves to
be, in actual practice, particularly illusory. The research reports
make it clear that, no matter how unobtrusive the anthropologists
hope to be, their presence is very challenging to local women. A lot
of studying and observation goes on in the opposite direction, too,
and the women under scrutiny are much more than just passive sub–
jects of skillful observation. The presence in their midst of a woman
who obviously leads a radically different life, and who is accorded
courtesies by male society - including their own men - that they
themselves could never hope for, often prompts them to bring their
grievances about their lot as women in that society to the visitor.
If
that visitor belongs to the new school of postfeminist neutrality, she
may not want to hear these confidences at all.
The women in the Iraqi village visited by Elizabeth Warnock
Fernea had much to ponder once she arrived. True, she came in a
veil and believed herself to be following all the rules of seclusion and
segregation, but no knowledgeable Iraqi eye was so easily deceived.
When invited to a gathering by one of the women, for example, she
