Some select quotes from a very interesting and compelling article. It is extremely difficult to argue one side or the other in this debate over “le voile intégrale” but I really appreciated Elaine Sciolino’s point of view about French tradition and culture.
One explanation is cultural. In French culture, the eyes are supposed to meet in public, to invite a conversation or just to exchange a visual greeting with a stranger.
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“Le regard” — the look exchanged by two people — is a classic component of French literature, developed centuries ago in the love poetry of the troubadours. Especially in Paris, a stare in public is not usually taken as a sign of rudeness, and can be accepted as a warm compliment.
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French tradition has also long encouraged mixing of the sexes in social situations. “The veil,” Ms. Habib continues, “interrupts the circulation of coquetry and of paying homage, in declaring that there is another possible way for the sexes to coexist: strict separation.”
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A more familiar explanation for French antagonism to the facial veil is historical and political: the deep-rooted French fear, resentment and rejection of the “other” — the immigrant, the invader, the potential terrorist or abuser of human rights who eats, drinks, prays and dresses differently, and refuses to assimilate in the French way.
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By donning an all-encompassing black garment that covers all but the eyes, these women seem to want their coverings, not their faces, to be noticed.
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Meanwhile, France will remain France — the land where the uncovered body is celebrated. (…) And one of the most colorful images of protest against labor reform in 2006 was of a flag-waving student in Bordeaux dressed as Marianne, in a red Phrygian cap and white peasant blouse. As in the 19th-century painting by Eugène Delacroix that hangs in the Louvre, her breasts were exposed. Marianne remains, as she has always been, the French republic’s idealized national symbol.
