Philadelphia’s many Examiners

NOTE: The Style blog does not actually want you to Examine.

I tend to think of examiner.com as a bit of a waste of time, as it what seems to happen about 90% of the time is this:

1. After being bewitched by magical buzzwords, people join this bastion of the new media crowdsourcing citizen journalism blogosphere.

2. They enjoy the official-sounding title they are assigned for a month or so, while summarizing or linking to articles written by someone who got paid a reasonable rate (which I understand: it’s tough to spend an hour writing original material if you’re getting paid around $2 an article).

3. They realize that there’s no money to be made, and move on.

4. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This cycle means very few people end up hitting their strides as writers, which takes a while, and having a huge turnover rate means the same stuff gets posted over and over (see this post, which I have nicknamed Jeans: people wear them sometimes! You might find them at the Gap!).

So I wasn’t super enthused to to wade through the Philadelphia Fashion Examiner, Philadelphia Style Examiner, Philadelphia Fashion and Style Examiner, Philadelphia Accessories Examiner, Philadelphia Women’s Fashion Examiner, the other Philadelphia Fashion Examiner, Center City Style Examiner, Center City Fashion Examiner, Philadelphia Fashion Trends Examiner, Philadelphia Fashion Scene Examiner,   Philadelphia Budget Fashion Examiner, Philadelphia Budget Fashion Scene Examiner… just take my word for it, I could list these all day long. But I looked at them all. For you.

And I did find one that I thought was interesting: the Philadelphia Muslim Women’s Style Examiner.

This may be exactly as hack-y as I find all the “Here’s a link to something from the Sartorialist/Vogue/the Frisky/lookbook.nu!” posts if Islam and its clothing strictures aren’t kind of new and exotic, but hey. New to me, probably new to you. Get some insight on the particular fashion annoyances of a seriously different culture!

Mariam Sobh, the writer, looks like she’s kept up with this for way longer than most of the other Examiners and posts pretty regularly, and it’s interesting to see advice on finding a hijabi swimsuit, whether it’s OK that Nordstrom’s is selling a tank top with “Allah” in Arabic on it as a design, top 10 headscarf wrap techniques…

Anyway, it’s more interesting than articles about how big glasses are suddenly in or the fucking Rachel Zoe Project, which is maybe the least tolerable show on television.

the new cultural appropriation target: Islam!

So a little while ago, as you may recall, Urban Outfitters got into that thing where they sold keffiyehs as ‘freedom scarves’ for $20 and people like Michelle Malkin got all in a tizzy because they were selling ‘terror scarves’ and then they stopped selling them real fast? And they had those T-shirts with the rock-and-roll Palestinian kid with an AK-47 which they also stopped selling real fast? Well, they’ve got themselves in about the same situation again with a new product, but the fallout may be slightly more interesting than Michelle Malkin (who incidentally went to my alma mater) yapping about jihad scarves this time, as it just involves religion, without overtones of things getting blown up.

Maybe they’re courting controversy, or maybe it’s just that none of the buyers checked to see what the translation of the character embossed on the $8 “Leather and rope bracelet” was. (Hint: it’s Allah! This means wearing this bracelet into the bathroom is extremely bad, if you’re an equal-opportunity religious believer!)

Keffiyehs, symbols of unknown translation on jewelry, a bunch of burqua-type hoods on the runways at the most recent fashion week… is Islam about to join Ireland, China, Africa, Jamaica and Kabbalah?

Oh MAN! And… maybe, in the long run, it wouldn’t be too bad for this sort of thing to sweep the frat houses of America, wiping out xenophobia? “It means, strength, Brah!” It’s not the most dignified of ambassadors, but really, neither were cheap Bruce Lee and Bob Marley posters.

Or hey, I could be completely wrong, tell me what you think. Is it this a dumb-yet-probably efficient route to more widespread acceptance of Islam as just another religion we happen to have in America, or is it really ignorant and insulting to commodify the name of anybody’s god, especially if most people wouldn’t even recognize it as such?

On an only slightly related note, you know what I wish would come back into fashion? 12th-century Safavid Islamic tile.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, that would be so sweet. I’m completely serious.

for more further reading, see this article in Heeb, “In Sheik’s Clothing” and the interesting and kind of hilarious commentary about the bracelet at KABOBfest.