Why am I ashamed of my driver's license photo? Well, let me tell you why I'm ashamed of my driver's license photo. First of all, it was taken on a Saturday morning in the roaring gray Seattle spring of 2007, when Obama was as of yet a young upstart on the cover of Newsweek looking cheeky and all was chaos. That is, my facial expression is something like apathetic. Passionless. Sleepy. My hair also looks bad, because I hadn't been able to shower and my bangs were in their 'fight the power' stage of insanity, having been awakened far earlier than they were prepared that morning.
But mostly, I'm ashamed because at the time I didn't contemplate what it actually meant to be a licensed driver. Yes, I had seen the horrifying 'I never meant to kill anyone...' videos about drunk driving in my driver's ed class. But come on! Social economic political implications!! Deeper levels!!
As my friend the Somalian immigrant told me, driving is power in America. That's why he was forced to make an illegal unlicensed trek across the country to Wyoming to get an out-of-state license in order to apply for employment in his home state of far-away-from-Wyoming. Driving is jobs. Driving is tiny differences in time that add up to school or not school. Driving is dignity. Driving is money. And we all know that some countries, most famously Saudi Arabia, one of the ways that women are kept from having normal and decent lives is by being legally forbidden to drive or travel in public without a male relative.
But apparently, the country is slowly kind of changing, with help from the Internet? This presents an interesting counterpoint to Lara's earlier discussion about technology and the way women and men interact. According to an article published this week in the Moshe Dayan Center, Saudi Arabia is a society in transition:
"Saudi attitudes are slowly changing, with King Abdallah’s encouragement. Even though Saudi Arabia filters the Internet, determined people can surf the sites they wish. And the Internet, dominated by young people, is a new arena for public expression where Saudi men and women are giving vent to their feelings. But Abdallah is still performing a certain balancing act. Much of Saudi Arabia's approach to reform is of the “two steps forward, one step back” variety." (Read more about it here.)
So, driving and the Internet. Good or bad for ladies?
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This is an interesting irony, as we western women always note that women in Saudi can't drive, and tend to point that out as the ultimate symbol of oppression. I do think all of this hysteria (get it--"hyst"eria?) over the decline of men, the end of men, etc. is a good smoke screen to keep us from thinking about other, even more sinister forms of systemic social and economic oppression.
ReplyDeleteI may have gotten off point there, but at least I made a comment. Hint, hint.
Loved this post, Liza
xo