It is such an illusion sometimes how social media makes others so far away feel so close, and so familiar, when they, and the world they live in, never was. Qandeel Baloch was a name that was just becoming familiar to me as I sat at home in the United States and watched one of her videos on YouTube. She was the sensual visual element in a Punjabi music video ironically called “BAN.” The video was on my Facebook feed. I clicked on it because it honestly seemed something weird, odd, and wrong coming out of Pakistan.
The woman in the video danced, gyrated, dressed provocatively, and “made love to the camera” un-ironically. I smirked, thinking, good for her. Maybe Pakistan isn’t as uptight as I thought it was; all the while knowing I would never be caught dead doing a video like that myself, most likely because of my Pakistani upbringing in the US.
Days later my Facebook page became inundated with posts of her murder by strangulation at the hands of her brother, Waseem. Only 25 years of age, he stood remorseless before a salivating press. He not only willingly confessed to what he had done, but went on to justify his actions. His sister had dishonored the Baloch people, by modelling, acting and engaging the public through social media outlets in unacceptable and provocative ways.
In the U.S., eyes roll at the mere mention of “Kardashian” – an entire family empire purportedly built on the release of a sex tape, yet not only does Kim Kardashian survive, she thrives by her successful leveraging of her sexuality into multimedia business deals. That takes brains.
Qandeel, whose real name is Fouzia Azeem, was not born in the US, but a lower-middle class family in Multan, Pakistan. Like Kim Kardashian, Fouzia exuded beauty. Unlike Kim Kardashian, that resulted in a forced marriage at 17, which Fouzia endured for less than two years before leaving penniless. She is believed to have worked odd jobs that included being a stewardess for a time. Fouzia eventually began modeling, which segued into building a social media persona that attracted and repulsed Pakistani society in tandem. At the time of her death, Fouzia had more than 43,000 Twitter followers and over 700,000 Facebook fans.
While her “BAN” video may have been one taunt against society gone too far, the reserve in her movements is telling. To me, Fouzia looked uncomfortable. So, after hearing of her murder, I googled who she was. What I saw was a girl simply trying to figure out how she fit in this world on her own terms. Her modelling career ushered her into the public sphere far away from the rigid gender roles not only the Baloch demand, as her brother Waseem reminded everyone after being arrested, but of women and men throughout Pakistani society.
Society decided how much of women it wants to see and hear, and more often we are to be seen in limited ways, and rarely to be heard, especially when it is not scripted. So, Fouzia she beat them to it, and wrote her own script. Her own objectification of her face and body gave her a national platform and it was empowering.
So far, the responses to her murder have been disappointing because they simply reaffirm the status quo. I was and was not surprised. I was surprised because I assumed as a model she came from an upper-class and liberal family. I was not surprised because when I realized where she came from I knew her death was to be expected in a country where the urban class lives by one set of values, and the remainder of the country another.
There were two victims in this honor killing. Fouzia Azeem and her brother Waseem. Vilifying Waseem without acknowledging he is a product of the culture he was raised in makes a farce of trying to pass anti-honor killings laws in a parliament filled with feudal landlords. Men who take that culture of karokari to the capital.
Many will blame Islam failing to realize that the men that speak for Islam are also from the same culture as Waseem and the feudal landlords that fill the Pakistani parliament. Men who believe it is okay to beat a woman lightly to maintain order. Society needs to change in order to change how Islam is practiced in Pakistan, not the other way around.
Empowering women, as Fouzia’s death has taught us too late, requires not leaving men like Waseem behind. You cannot teach a daughter to go conquer the world, but teach her brother to trip his sister on her way out the door.