For Huda Naccache, Israel’s 2011 representative in the Miss Earth beauty pageant, wearing a bikini is important for career advancement.
The 21-year old Christian Arab from Haifa has modeling ambitions, and in order to get noticed, she posed in a bikini for the cover of the Arab Israeli women’s magazine Lilac.
This may not sound like a big deal in a world where everyone from rock stars to child television icons seems to be willing to pose nearly nude for some photo or another. But in Huda’s community, such exposure for women is still taboo.
For Huda Naccache, Israel’s 2011 representative in the Miss Earth beauty pageant, wearing a bikini is important for career advancement.
The 21-year old Christian Arab from Haifa has modeling ambitions, and in order to get noticed, she posed in a bikini for the cover of the Arab Israeli women’s magazine Lilac.
This may not sound like a big deal in a world where everyone from rock stars to child television icons seems to be willing to pose nearly nude for some photo or another. But in Huda’s community, such exposure for women is still taboo.
In fact, this is the first time that Lilac, a ten-year old monthly that bucks tradition and publishes articles for Arab women on fashion, careers and even sex, has ever had a bikini-clad woman on the cover.
The notion of the bikini as liberation for women is tricky. Certainly rules of excessive female body cover – whether in Muslim or Jewish or other religious societies – are oppressive to women and inhibit growth, development and physical movement. Women and girls wearing a burqa or a jean skirt cannot easily ride a bicycle, do gymnastics, or climb a tree. And anyone who’s ever been to one of the natural springs in Israel’s north during the summer has undoubtedly witnessed the frightening sight of heavily clad women of different religions trying to avoid drowning under the weight of wet clothes.
There is a professional cost to women’s excessive body cover as well. It’s hard to be the only one dressed this way in professional settings. Even wearing a straw hat in an office full of bare heads makes some women feel different.
The most glaring limitation, though, is clearly the inability of heavily-covered women to take jobs that require lighter apparel. Forest rangers, aerobics instructors, actresses, lifeguards and choreographers are some of the jobs that are off limits for such women.