Response to the Size 6 Harem

​Essay 4: Response to ‘Size 6 Harem’

The story ‘Size 6’ is about a woman named Fatema Mernissi who goes to America and gets judged by her weight. She feels insecure and explains how America is different from Morocco, where she comes from. Mernissi compares how the West view women and how the East view women.

I agree with Mernissi about the tyranny of the ‘size 6 harem’. People are judging many women like Mernissi, who is considered “big” and overweight, every single day. For example, when these people walk into a department store and want to buy clothes, some stores do not sell their sizes so the saleswoman tells them “you’re too big for the sizes here” and they will feel insecure and sad.

I feel that Mernissi provides enough evidence to convince me of her views. Mernissi says that the West attitudes are more dangerous and cunning than Muslims. She also says that the Western culture judge a lot on how women look. For example, the West says, “in order for women to be considered “beautiful”, she needs to look like a fourteen year old, skinny, and rich. If she looks older and more mature, she is considered ugly and unattractive.” In her home country on the other hand, no one cares about each other’s size. Everyone just takes measurements and gets their clothes made.

This saleswoman in the article also tells Mernissi, “If we have sizes for big women like you, we would go out of businesses.” This tells me that the West is very judgmental and I think that judging people by their size should stop. With all of this information, it provides enough evidence to convince me.

To me, some of this applies to the poor and working class as well as the affluent. If women are considered poor and they look skinny and pretty, then they are considered attractive but if they are poor and they’re overweight, then they are considered unattractive and ugly. If women are rich and they are pretty and skinny, then they are attractive but if they are overweight, then they’ll still be considered attractive because they have the money.

My response has 2 main connections: text-to-self and text-to-text. For text-to-self, my mom also told me not to judge anyone by their weight. From this, I learned to not judge anyone. Everyone is still human even if you are fat or skinny. This relates to my response because in America, many people are judging Mernissi and it should stop as I said before. For text-to-text, this relates to the saying “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” This saying is very important because it tells people to not judge people by there outside but on what’s inside their heart like I said in my response.

In conclusion, Mernissi convinced me about ’the tyranny of the ‘size 6 harem’” because she explained it so well on how the West judges the size of women compared to the East.