Violence Against Women
Source: The Guardian
For the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, state TV aired a lesson in applying concealer to facial bruises. Why did anyone think this was a good idea?
Makeup tutorials have been big business for years. And with so many of them now out there, there’s a pressure to make them ever bolder. Recent Youtube videos show women using food (such as hummus and jam) as makeup, others show women attempting to put on full faces of makeup while high – and some show beauty vloggers recording themselves attempting to apply makeup without using mirrors. It was all fun and games until last week, when makeup artist Lilia Mouline, a host on Moroccan public channel 2M’s show Sabahiyat, conducted a tutorial on how to cover bruises from domestic violence.
“Good morning!” Mouline begins. “Today, we’re going to move to a topic that is saddening, but on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I’m going to show you the makeup that can cover bruises from the hits a woman may experience. It’s a topic we shouldn’t even have to discuss, but unfortunately, this is what it is.”
Beside her sits a model with a faint smile and “cinematic bruises”. Mouline takes out a multi-corrector concealer pallet: “We use the green corrector for the redder parts of the bruise,” she says. “We are then going to take this orange corrector, and apply to the bluer parts,” she continues. The tutorial goes on for more than seven minutes and concludes with Mouline wishing the victims of domestic violence abuse “better days”.
Two days after the episode aired, screenshots of the makeup tutorial began circulating on social media in Morocco. Within minutes, users had watched the full segment and, before 2M could take the video down, had copied it and started circulating it.
The reaction was swift and strong. On Twitter, Aida Alami wrote: “Next week, a segment on the benefits of going to the spa after rape?” Another user tweeted: “2M teaches you how to be a battered, but sexy woman.” And “God is great, beat your women under the patronage of the Moroccan regime,” tweeted another, alongside several crying laughing emojis. 2M published a statement in French and Arabic on its Facebook page, which was later read on the evening news. In it, the channel apologised and acknowledged the segment was an “error of judgment”.
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But for many Moroccans, this apology was not enough and a petition was created, which now has nearly 3,000 signatures, calling on Morocco’s High Authority of Audiovisual Communication (Haca) to “severely sanction” 2M and Sabahiyat. It adds that, instead of covering up domestic violence, it is time to “condemn the aggressor!” Should Haca decide to take action, it could span from a fine to the suspension of the show.
The question on everyone’s mind is: who actually thought this was a good idea? Sabahiyat is hosted almost entirely by Moroccan women and 2M’s editorial division is led by a French-Moroccan woman. The fact is that domestic violence is deeply normalised in the country, and backed up by a legal and justice system with endless loopholes. As Human Rights Watch pointed out earlier this year in a letter addressed to the minister for solidarity, women, family and social development, Bassima Hakkaoui, Morocco doesn’t even recognise domestic violence as a crime in its penal code. And Hakkaoui herself once publicly stated that if a rape victim married her rapist, it “would cause no real harm”.
Even as outrage poured forth in response to the domestic-violence makeup tutorial, in terms of the normalisation of violence against women, it was business as usual elsewhere. Last weekend, for instance, dozens of Moroccan women protested in front of the French consulate in Casablanca, demanding the release of pop star Saad Lamjarred, who has been imprisoned in France after being charged with “aggravated rape”. Videos circulated of women denouncing his arrest. “We’re with you, Saad Lmjarred. With our hearts, we can’t even sleep any more,” one woman said. Even one of the hosts on Sabahiyat, Leila Hadioui, published a petition calling for his release. And, in an unexpected plot twist, King Mohammed VI of Morocco said he will “cover the costs” of legal representation for Lamjarred.
Morocco may think of itself as a “pioneer” and “trailblazer” when it comes to women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa, with observers pointing to Morocco’s reformed personal status code law, which defines the state’s role in familial affairs, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance, as a “regional model”, or how the king’s wife, Princess Lalla Salma dresses in modern three-piece Chanel suits. But this is a moment for a serious, and engaging national conversation among Moroccan women of all classes and backgrounds. It’s time to shed the baggage of normalisation. Moroccan women have succeeded in pushing the national conversation before, whether it was on personal status code law reforms or demanding a change in archaic laws – and they can do it again.
By Samia Errazzouki