Women in the Middle East presenters

The history of the head scarf that our presenter provided (forgive me but I was dumb and didn't write down her name) helped add to the ideas that we started to touch after watching the documentary on the conflict this article of clothing has been causing in Turkey. At the beginning of the semester someone in our class (again forgive me, but it was like three months ago and I can't remember who said it) said that they thought that the American notion that these women are hiding behind them (or being forced to hide) and we needed to instead understand that it had more to do with preservation. Though preservation may have not been the exact word (and once again there is a good chance I am wrong because it was three months ago) I think this point correlated strongly to the message our presenter was trying to get across.
A weird connection that I started to think about (and this may be a very VERY loose connection) was the Dove campaign for real beauty. This campaign works with everyone from little girls to young woman to help them understand their definition of beauty, and where it comes from. I have done a few of these workshops and a thing that comes up in almost all of them is how women and girls recognize hair as a definition of beauty and identity. Though this may seem trivial, but it has a large effect on American girls definition of beauty. Most girls in these seminars believe that (due to media influence) the most beautiful girls are those with straight blonde hair. This may seem silly but the girls who discuss this in the seminars typically don't have straight blonde hair (maybe one or two do, but not ALL thirty or forty of them). Anyways, to get back onto the subject at hand, the point of the campaign is the help girls recognize what makes them special and unique and how a lot of this goes beyond physical attributes. They are taught to value themselves for their intelligence, personality, and passions.
While this woman was presenting about the head dress I couldn't help wondering, if this was part of our culture in the United States would dove still need a campaign for real beauty?
To sum this up, I really enjoyed listening to what the head dress represented to her, and I thought it was a very nice presentation.
On another semi related note...
The second speaker, towards the end of the class made the comment "sometimes women are womens worst enemies."
Does anyone remember what exactly the question was the brought this up. All I remember is thinking that she had a good point and I should blog on it...so much for that.