What is it about female hair ?

A French parliamentary commission has recommend a state ban of the Islamic burqua or full veil. It's a debate that will continue to rumble through the governments of western europe.

At a  pragmatic level even the better-informed Islamophobes see that state bans will produce the  opposite to the intended effect and strengthen funda-mentalism in minority communities.

Western liberals on the other hand are in danger of disappearing up their own relativist backsides in refusing  to address disturbing issues that they would never accept in their own culture.

Here's a thought though;  each of the images  here tells a story - and  these stories are not equally valid, they are equally fucked up. I could speculate at length on the cultural, historical and socio-economic origins of the customs portrayed, and the world-views they imply.

I think it is sufficient to simply say that they each reveal some profoundly twisted shit: About property relations, about the status of women, about suppressed sexuality ... and most of all about the unique and extraordinary power of religion to get people to connive in their own subordination.