Abstract
Since the beginning of the nineties, the Saudi government policies have encouraged the privatization of the economy, and Saudi Arabia has begun to negotiate its entry into WTO (which finally occurred in 2005). Riyadh’s urban landscape changed dramatically during this period, and new spaces accessible to women – shopping malls and workplaces - have appeared. These spaces are either opened to men and women or – most often – only to women, as Riyadh remains a strictly segregated city. In these sites, women are visible to other, unknown, women. Among Saudi women, young urban students and professionals have the most frequent access to public spaces. This paper will examine how young Saudi women’s increased public visibility, together with the success and multiplication of shopping malls in the city, shapes new norms of self presentation and consumption among them, often involving transgressions of official Islamic rules. It draws on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in Riyadh between 2005 and 2009, including a large number of interviews with young Saudi women from different familial and material backgrounds and the ethnographic observation of their daily practices in workplaces, shopping malls, religious spaces and universities.
In women’s spaces, such as workplaces, universities, or shopping malls, many interviewees stressed the importance of appearance, sometimes experienced as an obligation. More precisely, some young women emphasized two “compulsory” aspects: to be well-dressed, with branded accessories, and to look feminine, through make up, clothing and hairstyle. Linked to changing uses of urban spaces, these new norms engender new social groupings and distinctions among women. However, young women’s wearing fashionable, Western-style and often sexy clothes is also a way for them to transgress Islamic precepts of modesty, especially in public spaces where behaviours are subject to official Islamic rules, such as women’s university campus.
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