I do not need... Eurocentric feminists to dictate to me what I wear or shouldn't wear.

[Deep13]

228. It is a criminal offense for a Saudi woman to show her face in public...

...or forearms or ankles.

Muslim women like any other kind of person are not a monolithic group. Many take the attitude suggested here: that the insistence of liberalizing modesty rules as an effort to de-legitimize non-western culture. Of all the concerns women might have in the Middle East and elsewhere, head scarves seem a pretty low priority. Further, headscarves were never a big deal until Westerners started complaining about them as a marker of everything they thought was wrong with Muslim culture. In reaction, many women who had been indifferent insisted on wearing head coverings or even veils.

Still, it's a lot easier to take that attitude when it is a choice and not compulsory--either by law or custom. When I was in Jordan last summer, where the law does not mandate hair coverings, every Muslim woman I saw was wearing one, while few men wore the keffiyeh and most wore Western short-sleeve shirts. women covered everything except faces and hands. They may not be required to do so, but I wonder how their career prospects or social standings would be affected if they didn't. In some countries of course, the use of clothing as social controls is more palpable in Iran and even more so in Saudi Arabia. Oddly, social control in urban Turkey is through suppression of head coverings.

If I remember right, the FEMEN was protesting the concept of masculine or family honor being tied to female modesty. In extreme cases, this can lead to so-called honor killings if any kind of sexual impropriety is suspected, even rape. Frankly, the women participating in this protest have every right to express their dissent in any way they want. It they want to make a point by getting undressed, then they are not the first feminist protesters to do so. Perhaps some prefer native patriarchy to Western imperialist patriarchy, but they're are both patriarchal and those who push back against it ought to have our support.