The ways that faith can intersect with other aspects of a person’s identity are hugely varied, and sometimes may be comparatively under-appreciated by those outside a given faith group.
For example:
“The way women practice kes (the practice of keeping long, uncut hair) in Sikhism is policed in a specifically gendered way” (1)
This shows how gender may intersect with faith to affect a person’s sense of autonomy regarding choices about their own body. The article referenced above discusses the contradiction between Sikh beliefs about keeping hair uncut (which for men extends to facial and bodily hair), and the societal pressures for women to maintain a ‘feminine’ appearance, which is at odds with this.
“It’s less about religion and more about keeping relatives and society happy while enacting an acceptable morally pure version of feminine behavior. It’s the reason why many Sikhs don’t have a problem with waxing or shaving, but cutting hair on the head would not be socially acceptable. Yet, keeping too much hair, makes you not feminine enough. Which forces Sikh women, both who chose to be Sikh and are born Sikh, into being constantly policed on what they do with their hair.” (1)
Notions of femininity can intersect with faith in other ways too — but entrepreneurs (often women, and/or people of faith) frequently develop creative solutions to these challenges. For example, ‘nail rings’ which allow Muslim women to have the appearance of a full set of acrylics without breaching faith based requirements. (2) This is a small but powerful example of faith based inclusivity, for Muslim women who want to have a part in these contemporary aesthetic traditions.
(Image from: https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/manicurist-makes-nail-rings-muslim-30235455)
We see see other parallels between how gender and faith intersect in Haifaa Jawad’s writing on gender, Islam and sport:
“For visible Muslim women […] there can be issues regarding the culture of sports participation environments and Islamic codes of conduct requiring modesty in dress.” (3)
Faith and cultural norms around how Muslim woman’s bodies should be seen can come into conflict with their freedom to partake in certain activities.
Here we see the growth of inclusive sportswear. This was initially spearheaded, like the manicure attachments, by independent, female owned businesses, (4) and latterly embraced by big brands like Nike, which aim to support those who choose modest dress with hi-tech sportswear which is fit for purpose. (5)
While it is great to see product based solutions to intersectional issues, (and as a designer I naturally lean towards celebrating this), it’s worth remaining critical of how class and financial status can add an additional intersection, as Khan and Scholar note, when they reflect:
“Nike Persisted in its pursuit of the modest market by unveiling the Victory full-coverage swimsuit in 2019. With an initial price tag of $600, this launch highlighted the complex interplay between inclusion and accessibility” (5)
Image from: https://www.arabianbusiness.com/gallery/435311-nike-launches-full-coverage-swimsuits
I am particularly interested in how faith and gender intersect, but this is of course not the only way faith intersects with other aspects of a person’s identity.
Reki notes the harms of racialising religion. (6) She reflects on the experiences of black Christians in the US, who live in contrast to the often dominant white Christian nationalism that exists there, meaning they might experience injustice “according to both secular norms and white Christian norms”.
Reki also reflects on how — for Muslim women — their faith is often not only racialised, but also made hyper-visible for those who wear the veil.
Mirza (7) further enlightens us on how this hyper visibility can affect Muslim women’s lives, describing their existence as ‘embodied racialised religious threat’. Here we see three aspects of identity come together — faith, gender and race, which can affect women’s lives in many different settings.
“The overt racism which Kusbah experienced as a veiled Muslim woman shows the multiple ways macro geopolitical discourses of anti-Islamic hostility in Britain and its production of the raced and gendered Muslim female body operates through institutional structures in higher education to ‘affectively’ reproduce racialised gendered divisions that inhibit the academic progression.” (7)
In our context as tutors of a diverse international cohort it is vital to remember that no faith is inherently racialised, and no assumptions should be made about any student’s faith (based on their race or anything else) or about the extent of their faith based practice, including specific conventions they may or may not adhere to.
It is also vital to remember that faith based discrimination is not equally distributed across faiths, and majority faith groups may face fewer challenges than minority ones.
…if we are focused on academic contexts as a site of epistemic injustice for religion and religious people, even if most students feel marginalized with respect to their religion in nonreligious academic contexts, and even if those in a religious majority report feeling excluded or ostracized, as some research suggests, this marginalization does not occur in the same way for all students who are religious. Those who adhere to a minority religion in the West, such as Jews and Muslims, are reported to have “decreased sense of well-being and increased religious skepticism” in college contexts compared to those in a religious majority. (6)
Likewise, as a woman I am already well aware of how our bodily and societal choices and behaviours can be interrogated, in overt and covert ways. There should be no place for this at UAL. As a setting where we support and uplift uniqueness, creativity and self-expression in all forms, all people — of all faiths and none, should have space to present their true selves, and undertake whatever religious practices their faith demands. UAL has a duty to provide space and foster a culture which supports this.
References
- Sarna, J.K. (2017) Sikh Women And The Politics Of Hair, Feminism in India. Available at: https://feminisminindia.com/2017/07/24/sikh-women-hair-politics/ (Accessed: 13 May 2024).
- Dalton, N. (2023) Woman makes nail rings so Muslims can wear polish without missing a prayer, The Mirror. Available at: https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/manicurist-makes-nail-rings-muslim-30235455 (Accessed: 13 May 2024).
- Jawad, H. (2022) ‘Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women’, Religion and Global Society, 22 September. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2022/09/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/ (Accessed: 13 May 2024).
- ‘6 Muslim Companies That Created Sports Hijabs Way Before Nike’ (no date) Raqtive Sports Hijab. Available at: https://www.raqtive.com/blog/6-muslim-companies-that-created-sports-hijabs/ (Accessed: 13 May 2024).
- (Khan, M. and Scholar, R. (2023) ‘Modest Athleisure: Exploring Muslim Athlete Alignment with Modest Sportswear Trends’, in).
- Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp779–800
- Mirza, H. S. (2018) Black Bodies ‘Out of Place’ in Academic Spaces: Gender, Race, Faith and Culture in Post-race Times. In Dismantling Race in Higher Education, Eds. Arday, J & Mirza, H. S. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. pp 175-195.
Thanks for your reflections Emma. I was also taken by the example of the $600 Nike Victory Suit. This is a complicated product to consider, as the inflated price point clearly shows how inclusive practices can be manipulated for forms of corporate profiteering. Although it’s promising to see Nike adopt more representative product lines, I’m also left wondering about the after-effects of this launch on the female owned businesses you mentioned. Has Nike taken their idea and cannibalised some of their market? I imagine there could be an element of that at play here.
Your assertions around class and its intersection with this product are also valued. I was interested, so did a bit of digging around the product launch this morning. From what I can see, it never actually came to market with this high price-tag. It retails for around £80 now. This leaves me with lots of questions. Was there a price drop from Nike because of a blowback from the press? If so, that would be encouraging, showing that lines of progressive power that can be asserted by the media to better shape the ethical practices of big, established brands like Nike. However there’s not much conclusive evidence that can back me up in this theory. As a result, I’m also left wondering instead if the initial research article which you’ve cited might have misconstrued or misunderstood he actual intended retail value of the product.
Either way, I can’t quite find a clear answer. But that in itself has made me reflect again on our position as educators. Particularly when we’re examining corporate behaviours, it’s tempting to deploy an intersectional approach as a means of jumping towards an ethical critique. Students may also latch onto this form of analysis, as it’s easy to critique and think of big business as ‘the other’. What your blog post has made me reflect on instead is how to deploy intersectionality as a means of critical analysis that is deployed without these forms of judgement.
Lots of food for thought here – thank you!
Hi George! Yes, sooooo much more I would have liked to have explored around how capitalism intersects with inclusivity, and where we as designers (of products, fashion, culture and more) sit within this — and what our responsibilities are.
Very good point about the original article, that $600 did seem very steep! Maybe it was a very limited early sample, or special edition (famous brands like Nike do sometimes create very limited editions with high price points, OR potentially, it was such a limited edition that it was being resold for this price — who can say, but a good reminder to sometimes question our sources, thank you for delving deeper).
It’s also vital not to uncritically celebrate big brand adoption of inclusive concepts, as once big brands become established in any given market, it can stifle smaller, more creative designers in their endeavours. As you say — how did this affect those initial entrepreneurs who pushed the concept into the mainstream?
Emma, your comments on how the intersection of gender and faith can affect autonomous choice on one’s own body really struck me, and it was interesting to learn about the examples of enterprising efforts that strive to help women whose faith may interact with societal pressures to allow more inclusivity into contemporary aesthetics. I was unaware of the clip on nails before and importantly, I am unaware of the reasoning behind this for Muslim women – alerting me to not only find out more information on this, but to embody a more open mind around fashion choices that may have a very profound reasoning behind them. I feel fortunate to be part of the University community where aesthetic fashion choices often push boundaries and display as innovative forms of expression without limitation, and therefore I hope the diversity of this in some way supports our students to feel more included with the way they dress.
I wonder if you have watched the video clip ‘Muslim Vogue: Reina Lewis’ from the Islam Finance and Ethics society?(It’s on the padlet!) Professor Reina Lewis discusses what it means to have part of your religious life and personal expression commodified and how it feels when your experience and community is not reflected in predominant cultural forms. I think this is really interesting in relation to the $600 swimsuit and making consumer culture being accessible. This shows that there are steps in the right direction to make fashion more inclusive, but there is still much more room to improve in terms of exclusivity.
I am glad to hear you appreciated those reflections on bodily autonomy. A lot more I could have written about here, from my own perspective as a Christian as well. And likewise, I am constantly recognising just how much there is that I don’t know about faiths outside my own — until earlier this year I also did not know about the restrictions Muslim women face to getting polish on their nails.
I did watch the clip featuring Reina Lewis, though admittedly not until after I’d written this blog! Very pertinent, and as you say — while we have made great progress, there is a long way still to go. Luckily I do think there is a growing appetite and motivation for inclusivity, and I did find it interesting that the entrepreneur who created the nails I mentioned in my blog was not muslim herself — but she learned from her clients about their needs. This just shows the potential of learning about faiths and people who are different from ourselves, as we all may be able to bring ideas to the table, using methodologies of co-design and human centred design (at the centre of my practice in UXD)