Looking at Muslim women in the media and pop culture
Krista speaks with an AP reporters about Aisha’s Time magazine:
Krista Riley, a sociology graduate student and contributor to a Muslim women’s website, Muslimah Media Watch, finds the photo “invasive and deeply troubling.” To Riley, the image plays into racial divides and cultural distances.
Read more on the conversation here. Check it out!
Noorain Khan’s piece on bad burqa puns, which MMW reposted yesterday, came as I have been coincidentally trying to pull together an explanation of exactly what is wrong with headlines that use these puns. (For those unfamiliar with the structure, here’s an easy formula: “behind/beneath/under/beyond” +”the” + “veil/hijab/burqa/niqab.) Read her piece first for a great list of all the ways that this language plays out; what I want to do in this post is to expand on exactly what is wrong with using titles along these lines.
1. As Khan points out, this kind of headline is horribly uncreative and nauseatingly repetitive, described elsewhere as “a title that makes skins crawl among Muslim women the world around.” Even if this were the most brilliant, witty headline ever (which it isn’t; see below for why), it has been done so many times that I can’t imagine why no one has put a stop to it yet. If Khan’s piece linked above doesn’t give you enough examples, I’ve also written before about the many contexts in which it has been used:
To illustrate just how overdone this title is, a Google search of “behind the veil” (in quotes) gives about 569,000 results, including articles and books on women in Iran, “Western” journalists’ encounters with “women in conservative Islamic societies,” representations of Muslim women in Indian writings, an Australian woman’s experiences as a nurse in Saudi Arabia, prostitution in Iran, HIV/AIDS in Muslim countries, and even a BBC report from 2001 that also focused on Afghan women. The point is, it’s been done, ad nauseam, especially (but not exclusively) with regard to Muslim women, and “behind the veil” as a name is just plain lazy. Maybe that sounds harsh, but my frustration comes from having seen titles like this time and time again, and the implication that the only reason to pay attention to Muslim women is in order to de-veil them.
For another example, two separate articles about G. Willow Wilson’s new book, published in two different newspapers on the exact same day, used variations on this headline: a Boston Globe piece entitled “Beneath the Veil” and an article in the Daily Camera of Boulder, Colorado called “Under the Veil” (not available online.) Given the richness of Wilson’s writing and experiences, it’s disappointing at best that this title was the best that two different journalists could come up with.
While the front pages of newspapers feature Muslim women in flowing black abayas, burqas, and chadors, the often thrown-aside life and style sections are offering a very different picture of Muslim women: stylish! “Hijabistas,” trendy up-and-coming Muslim designers (predominantly from the U.K.), and fashion-forward hijabis are appearing on the covers of fashion and entertainment sections in newspapers across the world.
Designer Hana Tajima (right) and model. Image via Susannah Ireland for The Independent.
These “hijabistas” are wearing and designing clothes to reflect “Western fashion” reconciled with a “Muslim dress code,” according to British media outlets BBC and The Independent.
Following this trend of covering “hijabistas,” the Los Angeles Times recently ran a piece on the trend of stylish, hijab-friendly clothing worn by American Muslim women, and the recent emergence of blogs, magazines, and online boutiques that cater to fashion-forward American Muslim women. The article calls on Sama Wareh, a stylish Muslim woman; Tayyibah Taylor, editor in chief of Azizah Magazine; and Jokima Hamidullah, founder of We Love Hijab, to explain this fascination with Muslim fashion that has now captured the attention of newspapers.
Tayyibah explains, “In America, we have a microcosm of the Muslim world. There are 80 different ethnicities. It’s a cultural and spiritual buffet table. American Muslims pick and choose and create their own. Establishing hijab, as both fashion and spiritual, is part of that as well. These young bloggers and the new magazines are part of the building of a cultural architecture, and what is being created is distinctly Muslim American.”
Is this why newspapers seem to be obsessed with reporting on hijab fashion: to contribute to the creation of a distinct Muslim American—or, in the case of BBC and The Independent, a distinct British Muslim identity? While I am glad to see a focus on hijab that is not as “othering” as the typically marginalizing coverage, this seemingly benign widespread news trend still echoes previous discourse surrounding the hijab. The similarities are subtle, but nonetheless they are present.
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