Muslims wearing things, huh? Well I’m certainly terrified. Pulse faster, hands sweaty…

No, wait, wrong emotion.

Yeah, it means that blouse that turned into a potato sack can be rescued, but the one that the sleeves shrank cannot… But the pants that you shrank our of or burst through can be turned into something else.

Our new project on the house has destroyed several pairs of pants - which we’ve then turned into artsy-patched distressed pants which are far more interesting than their original lives.  Who cares that I now have flowers on my butt where they caught while I was working with stone?

I want to get all my very white friends that shirt.  And I want everyone to wear it when we go on our cruise in January.  A dozen motherfuckers in that would be amazing- 80% of the people around us would wonder what we were doing and the other 20% would get OMFG ARE THEY REALLY MUSLIMZ freaked.

I have a friend who is an amazing seamstress—she makes great costumes for Halloween as well as other festival type stuff. She also has made several every-day dresses and one goal of hers is to make a wedding dress for someone (although right now she’s in medical school, so I bet if one of her handful of friends she drunkenly said “I wanna make your wedding dress” to a few years ago actually took her up on that (usually offered when enebriated) promise, she’d have to ask that friend to post-pone the wedding until after her residency Anyway, my whole point is that despite her great skills, she gets her pants hemmed at her dry cleaners. I cannot sew my way out of a paper bag, but I do know how to hem my pants (I’m 5’2’‘—so this is a necessity). Skirts and sometime of good quality, I’d take to a tailor, though…certainly suits…though I did hem some suit pants a bit back and its held up.

That “Things Muslims Wear” site is fantastic. The pictures are great, as is finding out who the people are. That Marine has a great smile, by the way.

@SpiffyMcBang, I think the reaction would be much like the night I went to a ska show with a bunch of Queer Skinheads, and my husband looked around at all the terrified yuppies and said, “Think it would freak them out more if they knew I was the only straight one?”

Dude A looks very happy, like maybe he’s not wearing pants. </incurable optimist>

*blink*

Balloon Guy looks shockingly like my husband.  He’s not Muslim, though.  He’s Atheist.

I have to admit that this is the sort of thing I’d rather see, though (mildly NSFW).

Well, is the name muslimswearinghalvesofthings.com already taken? Start it up. :p

What, exactly, is Muslim garb for a guy? I see a lot of Arab tourists around town, and none of them wear turbans, though the occasional Sikhs do. Women with headscarves are a common sight, and from time to time I’ve even seen women at Fashion Island (Newport Beach) wearing a full abbaya with niqab, but somehow the sight of women shopping doesn’t fill me with terror.
Comment #8: bad Jim on 10/22 at 11:23 PM

There are fewer absolute rules, it’s just supposed to be “modest.”  Typically you would see:  Shirts to the wrist.  Shorts no shorter than to the knee.  No gold jewelry or silk.

That is one hard-charging motherfucker! Semper fi!

Maggie, as long as your husband isn’t prone to wearing balloon animals on his head, I see no reason to harass him at airports.

I love the MuslimsWearingThings site. I can’t believe people really want me to be afraid of these folks…

You’re all laughing now, but you won’t be when we’re all living under Balloon-Hat Sharia.

Balloon-Hat Sharia…terrifying, yet whimsical.  I guess I could live with that.

I’ve got to say, there is one picture on that blog that I would find kinda scary.  If I saw this guy, looking at me like that, I’d be pretty scared.

Thanks for the warning, http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/ ! Never again will I look at hospital scrubs, tuxedos, and Mr. Rogers-type sweaters with a naive, unsuspecting eye.

libdevil, that picture is proof that Islam is a culture of violence!

I wonder if there should be a complementary site of non-muslims-wearing-things so that we can know not to be frightened when we see someone in a turban or a burnoose or a re-enactment SS uniform…

I love G. Willow Wilsons shirt combo! However: Congressman Andre Carsons velour track suit takes fashion “terrorism” to a new level. D:

Regarding learning to sew - one of the best tips I ever got was that most middle to high end stores that sell sewing machines also take trade-ins, refurbish/clean them, and then sell them at a very deep discount. Most people buy a basic machine as a starter, then trade up if they find they really love it, so there are frequently at least a couple good solid name brand basic machines available for sale used, often with a warranty.

@Bad Jim: That’s the point of the site.  There is no Muslim uniform; they wear the same clothes as us normal people.  (Tongue firmly in cheek on that last bit, in case anyone wasn’t sure.)

You’re right, though, that women and girls in religious minorities are more likely to dress in ways that distinguish them from the general population than men and boys in the same religious minorities.  In my area, when you see Plain families (Mennonites, mostly) out at the store or whatever, the mother and daughters are immediately identifiable by their prayer caps, calf-length solid-colored dresses with long sleeves, and white sneakers.  The sons (fathers aren’t usually there) have on jeans and a plaid shirt, usually buttoned all the way up.  If you saw them apart from the rest of the family, you wouldn’t know if they were Plain or just kind of nerdy.  You also often see Plain teenage girls working the cash register at the market, the fabric store, and so on.  I have no idea what kind of jobs Plain teenage boys have—they’re not as noticeable.  Amish adult men you can spot, because of the hats, beards, and absence of buttons, but the Amish boys and other Plain men don’t dress too differently from anyone else, much like, as Jim observed, most Muslim men.  There are things Plain men don’t wear that the rest of the community does—shorts, t-shirts with things printed on them—but the things that they do wear overlap with mainstream male attire in a way that the women’s clothing does not.

So that’s an interesting question—why is it that in so many religious minorities, the expectations for women’s dress are further out of the mainstream than men’s?  (I’m aware of the problems with this way of phrasing the question, but failed to think of a non-Eurocenric way to put it—obviously, in predominantly Muslim countries, women’s headscarves, for example, are completely mainstream.)  Is it that since men, traditionally, interact more with outsiders, it’s more important for them to fit in?  Is it that traditional religious garb is generally based on old-fashioned definitions of modesty, and what’s considered modest for men simply hasn’t changed that much?  Is it about providing a visual marker of chastity and modesty?  Or a visual marker of belonging to the group? (And if so, why is a visual marker of belonging not important for men?)  Dunno, what do you all think?

bad Jim: a beard paired with a hat/fedora pretty much screams “software professional” to me.

There definitely are men who can be seen wearing Muslim robes out and about. White robes with a skullcap is what Juan Williams was thinking. But obviously an actual terrorist would never draw attention to himself like that.

Here in Singapore, 15% of the population is Muslim, and it’s about the safest place in the world.  Juan Williams should visit—he’d learn to chill out a bit.

On randomness, here’s a contender for most contrived headline possible.

Bad Jim, long sleeves, long pants and a hat or scarf that covers one’s head seems to be acceptable “Muslim garb’ for women, and I could be wearing “Muslim garb’ if I put a hat on.

A.—
Along with the reasons you gave, those are all very patriarchal groups. Controlling women is a big deal to them, so of course the dress requirements are stricter.

I live in a university town, and I have noticed that among the many foreign couples I see around town, often one is wearing their native dress and the other is dressed more like a local.  It is not always the woman who is wearing foreign-style clothing though; frequently it is the man.  In spite of the fact that they are probably here because the husband has a job or a fellowship associated with the university and may therefore feel that he should dress like the other academics.

Bad Jim, are you saying that men in California are forbidden by law to wear skirts or kilts?  That would strike me as very surprising and probably unconstitutional.

Amanda@15: He is not prone to wearing balloon animals - or rather, hasn’t been since the children were tiny - but he gets harassed at airports nonetheless.  He ALWAYS gets pulled aside for extra screening.

Two or three business trips ago, he was detained because TSA didn’t like his answer to the question of “Where are you from?”  (The answer is Toledo, OH.  It didn’t change when the question turned into “Where were you born?”  I realize some people are offended by the very existence of Ohio, but that was a bit much.)

TSA didn’t like his answer to the question of “Where are you from?” (The answer is Toledo, OH.  It didn’t change when the question turned into “Where were you born?”

Ooh, they should have asked him “no, but like, where are you really really from?” as I’m told by friends who get asked that sort of thing that such phrasing gets good results. :p

</blockquote>So that’s an interesting question—why is it that in so many religious minorities, the expectations for women’s dress are further out of the mainstream than men’s? </blockquote>

Obvious answer is patriarchy. But my guess is that the patriarchal effect is second-order. The dress for most/many sects that take dress seriously was ossified sometime before 1900 (in some cases long before 1900). So what you see is—with some updating, or just bending of the rules—what local men and women might have worn at some point in the 19th century. But men’s clothing hasn’t changed all that much since then (materials, collar details, hats, footwear details) whereas women’s clothing has undergone a sea change.

Jenny #16: here is the proper link for the Bittman bread recipe:
http://markbittman.com/dinner-with-bittman-quick-whole-wheat-and-mol

Mom and Grandma always sewed, so a certain amount of it may have been absorbed as a child. But there was a defining moment as a teenager when I realized A. I was going to have an oddly-shaped body no matter what I did, and B. It was going to be a very long time, if ever, before I could afford good new clothes. At that moment I said to myself, “Damn, girl, you’d better learn to sew.”

That’s why I loved the movie “Pretty in Pink” so much - I WAS that girl. When Dad took off and left us without means of support, he also left behind all his old clothes. I made a pretty kickass wardrobe out of all those dress shirts and suit jackets. I even learned to make men’s jeans look like girls’ (not too hard for me with my complete lack of hips).