I have recently been studying a lot about France and Algeria and the process of decolonisation in the 50’s and 60’s. It got me thinking about the relationship between the colonisation mission and the veil. Public unveiling was a ‘civilisation tool’ used by the French, where Algerian women would participate in large, public ceremonies where a French official would remove their veil as a symbol of the French liberating the Algerian women of oppression. It made me question the differences between the present day Western interpretation of the veil and that of the French Colonisers. Do we still have the same attitudes? You could argue the reasons behind why one would want to ‘unveil’ oppressed women have changed, more for humanitarian and liberation purposes as opposed to demonstrate power as the colonisers did, however I think there can be links made about the knowledge about the veil. The French saw the veil as an immediate barrier and made the assumption that women need help in order to be liberated, when in fact the majority had to be forced to unveil in public. I think that today we still share the same misunderstanding about the veil as the French colonisers did, and the assumption that all women’s experience of the veil is that of oppression and male dominance, when this is in fact a massive generalisation.