Fashion in Malaysia

A former student of mine is in Malaysia on a Fulbright; she wanted to work with women’s groups in an Islamic country, and seems to be learning a lot about life as a woman in a Malaysian country. Leslie recently emailed me a news article that the New Straits Times published on her, that included a picture of her in full headscarf. I think you can pick her out in the picture! Here’s a link to the article if you want to read the entire piece.
That one picture says a lot about fashion and material culture; notice Leslie and her friends in the picture are reading newsapers. There’s a lot to read from that picture, and it got me thinking more about the issue of clothing — I always use clothing in my classroom teaching to talk about the issue of “value” in economic anthropology and as an example of the connections between material culture and identity; in fact, my anthropologist wife Rebecca has written an article on fashion and identity in South Korea (focusing on hanbok). Leslie’s given me something more to think about!