Often described as being too beautiful to be smart or too old to be fashionable, Eastern European women are subject to numerous stereotypes. Wearing a headscarf around one’s hair is often a misunderstood practice, a mystery found at the intersectionality between tradition and culture.

Ten years ago, when I asked my grandmother why she never takes off her head covering — called a batik — she simply replied that orthodox married women have to wear it permanently from the moment they get married. Young girls like me, on the other hand, wear it when they go to church or to funerals. For her, it was normal to wear the headscarf in a community where all of the married women practiced this same custom. Not once did I see her without the scarf in public. I only saw her without the scarf a few times inside her house, as she combed her thin grey hair or changed her batik.

Made of fluid materials, such as molten fabric or calico and silk, the Romanian batik comes in various models and colors. The wide variety is inspired by geography and traditions that are meant to make each woman’s batik model difficult to imitate. Some have flowery embroidery, while others have golden and silver thread decoratively sewn and geometric patterns that date back to Neolithic cultures. Since then, the headscarf has become a symbol for the whole of Eastern Europe. It it representative of orthodox women in Albania, Bosnia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine. While all batiks have the same rectangular cut, the length varies according to country and region. While some are long enough to be wrapped around the head once, others are similar to long shawls that fall onto the shoulders.

Years ago, batiks were as mysterious to me as they are to the rest of the world. I had no idea that the Eastern European headscarf has become a mosaic that stitches modesty and exaggerated piousness, old and new values, all into a single piece of fabric. This year, during my trip around Romania, I talked to ethnographers and peasants about the importance of the headscarves in the local Eastern European culture.

“The batik is worn by women when they change their social status: from young girls to married women. Nowadays, in Transylvania, it is mainly worn at celebratory events,” said the curator at Vamii Museum in Bran, Transylvania.

Photo by Daria Zăhăleanu

She pointed out Easter or the National Day as occasions when women show off their headscarves. For elderly women in a more conservative orthodox region in the Eastern part of Romania, called Moldova, or Western Moldavia, the batik is a sign of modesty and keeping up tradition. It is said to be the umbrella of God upon them, a piece of clothing that connects them with divinity. Women don’t need to worry about the way they arrange their hair, a mundane practice that would distance them from God. When I asked women in Moldova if they would go bareheaded if they had the choice, most of them refused to imagine this. Even today, the picture of bareheaded women is not accepted in the region of Moldova. The Western model of showing your hair, which is promoted by media, is associated with vanity. The batik seems to be the apple of discord between conservative and modern communities: an anti-feminist statement that constrains women to follow the regulatory norms of orthodox religion, preventing them to claim their equal rights to men. The problem is multifaceted and leads to a more cogent question: how does the batik relate to the role of Eastern European women in society?

In a society whose orthodox religious affiliations demand women to cover their head, traditional and non-traditional values share common ground. The church promotes the traditional model of the woman who submissively conforms to the masculine figure of her father, brother or husband. In practice, current generations follow another model which promotes the powerful and independent identities of women all over the world. In this context, the head covering, a religious norm for all women that pray in the church, has become a symbol for the inferiority of women. For a long time, head covering has been referred to as a feminine matter, one which masked the gender issues that affected orthodox women. In recent history, orthodoxy and feminism have become two opposite terms. The empowerment of women in Eastern Europe is a movement that started right after the fall of communism, two decades ago, when democracy took over Europe. At that moment women gained the privilege of living their lives as they wanted to, free from regulations or judgement. The direction that Eastern European women took was heavily influenced by westernization — a current that promoted feminism, modern clothing and a diminished role of religion. Traditional clothing and the head covering that my grandma wore disappeared at the bottom of the dowry chest. The scarf became a symbol of peasants and old ladies that don’t embrace the new wave of changes. If centuries ago, it used to be an indicator of the social status of a woman, her age through the life stages of puberty, marriage and old age, it has now become an obsolete piece of clothing that reflects exaggerated modesty. Moreover, feminism was understood as a way of freeing women from the societal and religious norms. As the gender gap shrank and women progressed toward gaining rights, religion was losing more adherents.

As a result, Eastern Europe has been confronted with a crisis of identity that is about to be conquered by westernization. The custom of wearing headscarves has divided Eastern European women into those who have the stamina to wear it without fully understanding its significance, and women that don’t wear it at all. For example, my family members do not currently wear the headscarf. My mom doesn’t wear the batik in daily life, except for the times when she goes to church, when she may just quickly wrap a shawl around her head. Similarly, my aunts and cousins also don’t wear the batik. They consider the lack of social regulations related to female clothing a form of emancipation in the post-communist era. This family custom died out over the generations in our family and many others.

Women are not to be blamed for this. Due to lack of a solid scholarly basis, the orthodox women’s status hasn’t led to any changes inside the church. Instead, only orthodox women’s clothing and their mentality evolved along with societal changes. These changes encourage bare headedness, wearing pants and women’s independence.

“The Orthodox femininity is a dynamic religious identitary category having the essential traits which reflect all the social roles,” states professor Felicia Corduneanu mentions in her study on Identitary Character and Social Hypostases of Christian-Orthodox Femininity.

For this reason, the role of the head covering has to be contextualized in relation to the issues that orthodox women face nowadays. The batik shouldn’t be seen anymore as a compulsory headscarf for orthodox women, but a piece of clothing that women are free to wear or not. Historically seen as two opposite terms, orthodoxy and feminism must stop being opposite and embrace feminism as a form of empowering women through religion. In order to achieve this, Eastern European women take small steps. Nowadays, the batik has received a revamp and is widely seen as a vintage piece that revives the memories about grandma’s dowry. On special occasions that promote the traditional model of Eastern European femininity, the batik takes on a positive connotation. This shift is most commonly observed in weddings, baptisms and other celebratory events, where women cover their head with the traditional batik as a fashion statement.

However, head covering is more than a social or religious norm. Among those who appreciate the batik’s use, the batik allows them to immerse into the history of the garment. The batik’s history connects generations of women in hardships and joys, wars and peace. It is that one thing that my grandmother has never given up, a mixture of spirituality and pride. It is a sense of belonging to a unique culture. Moreover, the batik is a controversial piece of clothing that paradoxically empowers and disempowers Eastern European women simultaneously.