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ɫ��Ƶ���� researcher Carla Jones finds that what Indonesian women wear in court can convey messages of piety and shame, or just the appearance of them

No matter who you are and what clothes you have on, you have probably, at some point, thought about how what you wear affects how you are seen.

Fashion is an important mode of self-expression, but it can also be a significant component of social communication. ɫ��Ƶ���� anthropology Professor Carla Jones’ focusing on fashion within the Indonesian criminal justice system illustrates how appearance can be a public and personal feature of social and political communication.

ɫ��Ƶ���� researcher Carla Jones, a professor of anthropology, noticed that when Indonesian women were accused of corruption, they faced intense scrutiny about their appearances, both before and during their trials.

Jones’ interest in Indonesia started when she visited the country in college, but her youth in Southeast Asia also played a part in her sustained interest in the culture there. As an anthropologist, she says, she is interested in diversity–in which Indonesian culture and social life is rich.

She also credits her interest in learning to speak Indonesian with her total immersion there. “Learning a new language can change your life,” she says. “Cultural anthropologists need to be able to ask questions and understand. You have to learn how to be an insider and an outsider at once.”

In the past two decades, public political culture in Indonesia has become increasingly focused on corruption. Although Indonesia is not unusually corrupt, many of the most visible corruption trials have captivated public attention through media focus on theft of public funds.

Jones noticed that when women were accused of corruption, they faced intense scrutiny about their appearances, both before and during their trials. Jones says she noticed that female defendants in corruption cases adjusted their clothing in ways that went far beyond the public norms for the majority-Muslim country.

Modesty was a particularly compelling visual strategy. Although modest styles are increasingly popular globally (think: trad-wife trends on TikTok), the styles that accused Indonesian women adopted for trials were especially visible when they appeared in court and were very different from their styles of dress prior to their trials, Jones says.

Many women, she says, would elect to wear facial coverings, called a niqab or cadar, when appearing before a judge. Wearing a niqab is not especially common in Indonesia. Jones argues in her paper that women choosing to express their religion so outwardly was also an effort to appear more pious and ashamed of their actions (or more innocent) to judges and to the public.

Niqab in court

So, does it work? According to Jones, yes, along with other factors. The women in these cases who wore a niqab to court tended to get shorter prison sentences than others did. “Their attorneys also did a really good job conveying that they are mothers, and their justification was to provide for their children,” she says.

However, that doesn’t mean these women on trial were received the same way all over the world. When Anniesa Hasibuan, an internationally famous modest-fashion designer who was charged with fraud, took the stand in West Java, the coverage expanded to all over the world, .

The international coverage of Hasibuan’s trial called additional attention to her choice to wear a niqab. Some Indonesians who were following her case closely viewed her choice to cover her face much as some Americans might: as an attempt to foreclose transparency about her appearance and therefore her finances. Many Indonesians viewed her appearance as a sign of dishonesty rather than piety.

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