Insensitive and Inappropriate Observations

I may have mentioned this before, but what the heck, I'll mention it again: I am continually surprised at the comfort young people show with 'video calls'. It seems in fact, in Indonesia anyway, to be the favored choice for long distance conversation. This is disturbing for me, because I am generally uncomfortable with this form of communication. It feels stressful and disconcerting. The video seems somehow to interfere with natural conversation, to be distracting rather than engaging, for though you are chatting face to face in real time, the distance remains somehow persistently in effect. In fact, the distance seems somehow more distant yet. Weird. Is it just me? 

And here's another thing that strikes me as odd. Without meaning to sound culturally insensitive, it does not seem to occur to those Indonesian women who are wearing hijabs (which is pretty much all women outside of Bali) that each one of them looks more or less the same as any other woman wearing a hijab. These are not the full Middle Eastern type hijabs that nearly completely cover the face, but more like scarf arrangements that expose the oval of the face while covering the hair, forehead, ears, neck, and so on. I find that this significantly reduces the individuality of any one face, especially for someone who faces challenges where facial recognition is concerned to begin with. 

To this point, I was video chatting today with a woman from Batam, video at her insistence of course, and then she later sent me a photograph of three women and asked me identify her among the three. I had no idea whatsoever, and therefore chose the only one who stood out against the others, which was she who was wearing eyeglasses. 

Wrong! the woman replied. 

Well no wonder. There was only a 33 percent chance of getting it right. 

Moreover, how is it, I wonder, that any individual woman, given the irrepressible vanity of the gender, bear to have her own incomparable beauty obscured? Far from the western model of makeup and maximum exposure, here we have an intentional cloaking. How can she stand out, and where in the world is the woman who can stand not to stand out among her peers? 

Clearly, they do believe that they stand out despite the obscuration. The thing is, I'm just having a hard time seeing it.