Real News Disguised as "No News"

As I logged on to the internet today, an article caught my attention on my homepage, Google News. It was titled "Pelosi scarves a diplomatic accessory", and at first I thought, "Wow, US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wears scarves, and that becomes one of the top two news stories on Google?" But as I read the article, I realized that even though there was a lot of somewhat trivial talk about her "silky white scarf with yellow flowers" and "black abaya robe, decorated with a gold-colored band across the front, over her lime-green pantsuit," this article really did contain some real, useful information.

Intertwined with what color scarves she had around her neck and what sort of pants suit she was wearing, the article gave the readers some interesting and important information about Islamic culture and how women are expected to dress. Nancy Pelosi had to have a scarf ready in case she went into a specific place, such as a mosque. Also, I found it interesting that she had to dress differently according to which Middle Eastern country she was visiting. I think many Americans, when they think of the Middle East, tend to imagine all of the countries there as being the same, but this article showed one cultural way in which they are different. It also gave its readers a taste of the general atmosphere in some of the countries, such as Syria, which is "far more secular" than some of the other countries she visited, and where she had to wear a skirt instead of her usual pants suit. I thought this article was interesting also because it illustrated how different it is for a woman dignitary to visit the Middle East than it is for a man. As the article states, "Female dignitaries visiting Mideast countries have to keep dress in mind in a way men don't. When out in public, particularly at religious sites, women politicians take care not to offend while trying to avoid cumbersome outfits."

I felt like sharing this article here because it seemed at first to be a "no news" type of story, talking about the outfits Nancy Pelosi wore on her trip to the Middle East, rather than what she was actually doing there. And this is true, the article did focus on what she wore, but it did not leave out some really important cultural information, the sort of thing you probably wouldn't get from an article that talked strictly about what she did there. It just goes to show that sometimes, real news can be hiding in a "no news" disguise, and we shouldn't be so quick to jump on an article as simply pointless until we have read it through carefully.