did choose their religion. The Western world is very caught up in the plight of women in Afghanistan, and their subjugation; so much so that many don’t stop to think about their own subjugation. We think it is terrible that a woman should be stuffed into a sheet so that she wont be looked at in lust, that she should have the right to choose, and well this is true, or society is at the other extreme. Ms. Mustafa chooses to wear her hijab so people will know her as a person. In 1997, the Ontario government passed a bill saying women had the right to be topless in public, and women all over the province rejoiced. Ms. Mustafa attacked the issue saying “Women are not going to achieve equality with the right to bare their breasts in public, as some people would like to have you believe. That would only make us party to our own objectification” (481). It is very true. In our society “women are taught from early childhood that their worth is proportional to their attractiveness” (Mustafa 480). It is true. The very magazine that featured the article on women in Afghanistan was absolutely full of advertisements showing voluptuous, tall, sleek women, an ideal few can hope to achieve. Even the articles enslave, articles on how to better do one’s make up, to hook that man and many along the same lines. Woman are conditioned from a very young age to feel bad about the way they look so they will buy that miracle product that will instantly make them taller, thinner, and make their breasts that much bigger. In the question of who is really a slave to their society, it is the so-called liberated women of the western world who lose. At least the woman in the burqa has self respect. The Taliban brutally removed women from the world that they were accustomed to. Perhaps it would not have been so bad for them had they not known the freedoms of education and the workforce. Unfortunately, however, they did, and the abruptne...
