Ban the Business Burqa
From Michael Leunig (cartoons site). Check out a selection of Leunig cartoons posted here.
Articles (selection) by Leunig
* Lest we forget the ultimate price of warfare, The Age, 23 April 2005
* The cartoonists’ lot: holding the mirror to a fractured world, The Age, 13 January 2006
* They know not what they do, The Age, 10 Feb 2007
* Interview with Michael Leunig, Enough Rope with Andrew Denton, 2006.
And I’ve often thought how very odd it is that those of us in Christian ministry who don’t wear robes or collars wear – of all things – business suits.
I sent this cartoon to all of my doddering old attorney friends as a Holiday greeting! :-P
Monte, interesting that that’s the convention! Does that include a business jacket? My uncle, Father Joe, wears his stock black pants and crisp white short but prefers a more casual cardigan or sweater to a blazer.
99, I hope they appreciate the humor! ;-)
It feels so exclusive here now. The possibilities for meaningful dialog are unlimited in the cloistered hall! Woohoo! Could we really think out loud if we wanted? Is it allowed? I’m breathing more easily already. Set free my incendiary soul.
I love that cartoon. I confess that back in the day I never had the courage to break the mold. There weren’t many alternatives, with dress being related to social function. The nail that sticks up gets pounded down, as you know. I’m not so sure I would do anything differently even now.
If I were black, I could have access to rich wardrobe alternatives, or if I were gay. A straight white man wearing a Kofia in Washington DC would not be allowed to stroll at a casual pace for any distance and people are so superficial there would be nothing else to talk about.
As casual Fridays developed here in the U.S. the best alternative I saw among my white colleagues was bright orange or red Hawaiian shirts with bright orange tennis shoes. Couldn’t pull that off since I was management and I don’t like Margaritas. When allowed to run free the animals on the farm chose de rigueur open collar shirts and Jeans. There was totally outrageous and totally boring and nothing in between.
You can laugh, but there really aren’t a lot of choices. We are not a creative bunch. I liked Cuban shirts for a while, which were favored by the foreign service and Ernest Hemingway, but that was several generations before mine. I even tried a Panama hat for a little while, but men kept buying me drinks at the pavilions.
I suppose its a case of Stockholm Syndrome where you keep yourself locked up even though you have a key in your pocket.
Yes, the guys are howling with holiday glee about their business burqa thing…. And who knows but it might begin the kind of solidarity to help all the women who want out of them out of them! [Probably not….]