What Jackie Chamoun does with her body is not the business of Lebanon’s government
The most outrageous thing about the story of the Lebanese skier is that some think her body is public property
Here’s the thing about Jackie Chamoun and the controversy about some semi-naked photographs she took in the snow a couple of years ago.
I don’t particularly have a view on whether she should or should not have posed for the calendar and the accompanying video. People can read her decision to pose topless according to their own moral compass. And I don’t particularly have a view on whether posing topless means she’s an especially good ambassador for skiing or for Lebanon or whatever.
But I do have a problem with the suggestion from a Lebanese newspaper and the Lebanese Sports Ministry that what Chamoun does with her own body is somehow the business of the Lebanese state.
Because both Al Jadeed, the website which broke the story, and the Ministry, which asked Lebanon’s Olympic Committee to investigate, have suggested the photographs might harm the reputation of Lebanon. And it’s unclear to me how that might be the case, unless the body of every Lebanese woman somehow automatically belongs to Lebanon itself.
Undressed women and sports have a long history, along with related histrionics (remember the craziness that followed when Janet Jackson had a clothing malfunction at the Super Bowl). But note the difference: this is something from Chamoun’s past.
Although Chamoun is obviously representing the country during the Winter Olympics, she was not doing so in the topless photographs. The colours of the Lebanese team don’t appear. Nor are the photographs nor the video being used to promote her current appearance at Sochi. These are the images, then, of a woman, in public, yes, but in her private life.
The question is whether the Lebanese government should have an opinion on something that Chamoun did, in the past, in her private life. The answer is clearly no.
The problem I have with it is the presumption that what a Lebanese woman chooses to do with her body — in the past — is somehow of current interest to the Lebanese government. That somehow Lebanese politicians need to be involved in deciding upon, arbitrating on, and judging whether Chamoun has in any way harmed the reputation of the country. But what Chamoun does with her own body, in her private life, does not in any way impact the Lebanese state. That’s not merely because Lebanon has so many other problems (though it does) but because the mere act of inviting politicians to “judge” Chamoun’s actions gives both the action and the politicians powers they do not possess.
At issue is the construction of an idea that a Lebanese woman’s body is somehow the public property of Lebanon itself. That what Chamoun chooses to do in her private life, somehow has an impact on Lebanon itself. But Chamoun’s body does not belong to Lebanon or the Lebanese government. So her body cannot harm the reputation of Lebanon, unless it was being used to represent Lebanon at the time (which it was not).
This, to me, is the irritating part of the discussion. That these politicians, and the journalists, presume to judge Chamoun’s body as if it were the property of Lebanon. As if, simply by being citizens of the same country, they have a right to judge her body, what she represents and the impact of her nudity on their country’s reputation. That’s the irritating part — and especially so because, as the author Joumana Haddad has pointed out, the Lebanese state frequently markets itself to tourists using the bodies of Lebanese women.
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(These thoughts, rather naturally, reflect only my opinion, not that of any organisations or institutions I am affiliated with.)
