I don't remember the name, but another artist, a fashion designer with a Muslim name, has already done this concept much more subversively, using live models.

This stuff is already stale.

Also, this guy doesn't sound too brilliant. Hugh Hefner wannabe who thinks the burqa isn't wrong? Puh--leeze.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, there! Comparing Falwell to Khomeini cannot be left unchallenged. Even I will have to put down my nail-studded club for a second to roll up my sleeves and take on this one.

So Falwell is different from Khomeini HOW again?

Let's see, Falwell:

hates everything that liberals stand for....check!

has no use for science except to exploit it...check!

needs to look reality in the face.....triple check, underline, and you can put that in bold print!

Robby....you described Falwell very well! But what were you trying to say about Khomeini?

The "artist" says he would like to be a Hugh Hefner of the Middle East--on the other hand, he thinks that women need to wear the burqa "to protect themselves and men".

What else do you need to know? Of course the paintings are bad. Look at the mind that created them.

The only reason the feminists on Broadsheet are paying any attention to him is because they don't get it, and they think there's something "deeper" there. It plays so well into their own preoccupations, doesn't it, the whole Burqa-oppression vs. Bikini-oppression "debate" (hint to the girls: there really isn't one).

Mediocre art from a mediocre brain, based on a false dichotomy. Like the whole cultural relativist argument. I don't think this guy even really knows what a cultural relativist is, much less is he capable of being one.

But, whatever, maybe he will get to be the Hugh Hefner of the Arab world. After all, he doesn't need to show their faces as long as he can get the T and A into the pictures.

The last sixty years are not the whole history of Islam...that's 1,400 years. The post colonial period has seen a lot of developments in the religion that are totally new to Islam, and some weird revivalist movements.

Both sides of this debate are incredibly dishonest about Muslim history. One side says all Muslims everywhere were always as bad as their most violent present day political movements, and the other side seriously overstates the achievements of the Muslim "Golden Age".

Neither is true.....

A modicum of truth would help, you know.

When I was a grad student, I got enough money from teaching to live on as long as I was frugal. And everybody else did, too, and naturally our tuition was remitted. So I don't know, I'm not really buying it that she will starve if she doesn't strip. She has a teaching job. Yeah, it sucks have to live on your TA salary. But it can be done. And....

her students will see her, her peers and others will see her. It doesn't matter who thinks this should or shouldn't make a difference. It will. It will come back to bite her. Either she won't be able to command respect in her classes, or the people over her in her dept. will suspect that she won't command respect. The other profs may decide that she projects a bad image of the university (which is true). She could find herself fired with nothing to do except stripping.

It's possible to get through grad school without doing sex work. Lots of us have done it. It will be better for her post-stripping career if she can find a way to quit.

And lap dancing isn't really "just stripping", it's a very small step from outright prostitution. There's got to be better ways to get through grad school.

I sense a little smugness in the final sentence, "It's not supposed to be my fault, but the patriarchal culture that forces me into it"....you know what? That womyn's studies crap is okay for your papers, but the reality is that your university dept. when all is said and done functions like any other bureaucracy, and that excuse won't fly there.

Project a professional image now and you will reap the benefits later. Academic work is very heavy on references and recommendations and networking. Very few people publish research that is actually of any worth or real import, so it ends up boiling down to who you know. Do you want to be known as the job applicant who, when the dean of the school you're applying to calls your dean, is described as , "well, I don't know about her work, but she sure has a hot body and she can get a guy off in three minutes flat...!" Do you think they won't say that? Profs are assholes.

Fair or not, you'll be treated differently. Don't do it.

If you have to wear a disguise, should you be doing it?

My concern really is that you are already a teacher at the school; you are really already representing your department, and they will not take it kindly if they find out. You are working (in class)with young men near your age and you must be seen as displaying good judgement and good conduct.