Hypocrisy Over Images of Women

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/opinion/hypocrisy-over-images-of-women.html

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To the Editor:

Vanessa Friedman’s Unbuttoned column (“From Breakthrough to Backlash,” April 14) highlights one of the blind spots in French views of Muslim culture. The usual intellectual and political voices who seem to be quoted in every article on the subject claim that the so-called “modest” fashion is a form of control over women’s bodies, as well as a reprehensible profit motive by companies that market these.

Those voices completely overlook that in France you cannot avoid a constant barrage of pictures of anorexic and half (or fully) naked models in magazines and street advertisements. Isn’t it quite obvious, however, that these also reflect a purely cultural idea of women’s beauty, sensuality and desirability created by masculine desire and the fashion conglomerates that dictate what to wear? For Pierre Berge of the house of Saint Laurent to call the kettle black is comical. Once again, women’s bodies are used as arguments in a current ideological warfare without women’s voices being heard by either side.

ISABELLE DE COURTIVRON

Paris