Unvieling of the Veil

The French Prime minister is unveiling the veil. This is most confusing for a everyone. I went to Saudi Arabia as a teenager and had to wear the full gear apart from covering my face that was OK because I was from the West. I also had to be escorted everywhere by my family. I was sweet sixteen and was very shy and didn't want to draw attention to myself. In Ireland where I grew up boys were never interested in me and I was worth nothing to them. Boys and men had generally been bully's in my life and rarely showed a nice side, so I had no interest in getting a boyfriend at that age.

But when I was out in the markets in Saudi, I went to a gold shop to have a look around at the jewelery with my brother, this view of European men was reinforced. The gold shop owner said to my brother how much for your sister. Then he started haggling and offered my brother the whole gold shop to him. My brother then said 40 riyals which was about 40p, the gold shop guy then got mad at him and opened draws of cash offering money and the whole gold shop. My brother still said forty riyals. I was raging by then and annoyed by my brother saying I was worthless.

Then my dad had an offer from his boss who already had several wife's and children but had no sons and thought another wife might give him one. He offered £30,000 to my Dad plus £30,000 to all his brothers each and a camel farm and a string of limousine cars. My Dad was certainly thinking about selling me off. I actually had to stand my ground for freedom, but was flattered by so many great offers. If the rules were changed like that I got offered the cash instead of all the men in my family getting it, I might have taken one of the men up on the offer. But as it went there is very little I would want to buy anyway, so all the money in the world doesn't really make me a bride to slavery. If I had spent any longer in Saudi I think the marriage offers would have turned to annoying and I would have completely covered up to save the hassle.

The full gear also worked as a great way to keep the sun off as I got burnt easily in the dessert and the silk caught the slightest breeze, which kept me cooler. What I wore underneath didn't matter so a bad clothes day could be covered up.

Then years later I was at art college in Bradford and there is quite a lot of Muslim Women wearing the full outfits there. But there was never very many happy stories about the Muslim women there, who were sometimes bought over from abroad, could not speak English, forced into arranged marriages then forced to have children, trapped into there homes with lack of communication with the outside world. Getting beatings and sometimes tried to suicide by pouring petrol over themselves. So the Burka in one way covers up the scars of forced arranged marriages.

Then as growing up in Dublin only in the 1970's all women wore head scarfs. Even my mother would not leave the house with out one. They were not a fashion statement, they covered up the hair do, to stop it blowing about in the wind and kept the wind from blowing in the delicate ears and kept the head and neck warm and in winter bigger scarfs were worn to keep the shoulders warm. As we see in the UK the Queen still wears a head scarf when outdoors.

As for the hole in the Ozone which is directly over Tasmania, women there have taken to wearing a head scarf to save getting skin cancer on head and neck.

When I worked in a retirement home I had to take a guy to the hospital to have his skin cancer on his head treated. My eyes watered watching him have the treatment done, it was so painful.

My friends from OZ have skin cancer and there between the ages of thirty and forty. So I make a point of not going out, unless necessary and always wearing a hat or scarf and sunglasses.

So I think the French President is right to say women should have there freedom but he should take into account that the head scarf is a useful item of clothing.

Maybe he should instead fund programmes for teaching Muslim women French and helping them set up there own businesses and women's groups or art groups after all it is France home to the great artists.

None of the information in my blog is based on scientific research and evidence, it is purely on my experience and story, so don't get upset by anything I write. I get on much better with men now and put them in there place when there out of line. I would also say it be a good idea if the whole world started to respect women and let them wear what what ever they want or nothing at all if that's what they want. The ultimate freedom is wearing nothing at all, which we get about 10 seconds of just after were born and the occasional go at skinny dipping in the sea.

I have just heard that religion is band in french schools this is fantastic news. My school life was ruined by religion and I could have spent all the hours per day wasted on religion making art. I really could not relate to the story's or the illustrations of religious figures in robes, centuries before. The constant thanking of to a god that I couldn't see, made me feel like adults and teachers were all insane. I wanted to learn straight up things, like how to grow a tree, buy an apple from a shop, how to make a pedal car like the one in the Bugsy Malone film, how to make sugar glass. How to play a guitar, How to fill out a form, what all the stars in the sky were, what all the wild flowers were called. How to cook a decent meal, how to make a ladder. How to be a tailor, a sailor, an actor, a film maker, a decorator, a stilt walker, a fire person, how to fix a bike, a car, sewing machine. All these useful things I had to teach myself at home. School was in fact 10 years of wasted in my life and because I knew it was and didn't want to go. I was sent to a shrink by the government officials which wasted more of my time.