Consumer Culture, Islam and the Politics of Lifestyle

This article traces the growth of the `fashion for veiling' which has grown in Turkey since the early 1990s, and discusses the representation of Muslim women in both the cultural and public spheres in the late 1980s. The practice of veiling has been chosen to explore how religious iconography is changing to reflect new patterns of consumption and pleasure, and the ways in which these changes are occurring. The authors focus on the shifting meanings of the practice of veiling due to the articulation of Islamic faith into consumption culture, as evidenced in advertising images and commentaries taken from Islamic women's magazines, and fashion catalogues of major Islamic clothing companies. The authors examine the problematic relationship of the fashion for veiling to two other established meanings of veiling: as a sign of adherence to the Islamic principle of covering the female body to conceal it from the male gaze, and as a sign of `political Islam'.