{"id":1060,"date":"2008-09-24T00:00:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T07:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muslimahmediawatch.wordpress.com\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2011-12-08T23:34:10","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T03:34:10","slug":"everywoman-hijab-fashion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2008\/09\/everywoman-hijab-fashion\/","title":{"rendered":"Everywoman: Hijab Fashion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It seems that lately there is a lot of focus on hijab fashion. Not too long ago, I wrote an entry<\/a> for MMW about this issue. Everywoman<\/a><\/em>, a program produced by Al Jazeera<\/em> English, did a piece on hijabi fashion. The program looked at the fashion choices of a group of hijabis in England in one of their episodes. The piece seemed rather odd, since it came right after a segment that focused on a Buddhist<\/a> woman trying to gain ordination as a monk. But I digress.<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nFrom the beginning of the segment, I found so many things that rubbed me the wrong way. The first was that good old dichotomy between \u201cWestern\u201d fashion and being modest. The host, Shiulie Ghosh, introduces the segment by asking how Muslim women in the West combine the need to modest and the desire to be fashionable. When did \u201cmodest\u201d and \u201cfashionable\u201d become antonyms? Hijabis stay \u201cfashionable\u201d the way all other women who want to be \u201cfashionable\u201d do. It\u2019s not rocket science. Also, what is our definition of modesty? I know this point has been hounded, but we really do say a lot when automatically equate hijabis with modesty. Are Muslim women who don\u2019t wear not modest?<\/p>\nAnother reason why I find the \u201chow do hijabis manage to be so fashionable?\u201d inquiries so annoying is because they mostly otherize hijabis. I always get the sense the inquiries aren\u2019t made out of a genuine sense of curiosity, but rather a sense of trying to wrap one\u2019s head around the other.<\/p>\nThen the host of the segment, Amani Zain, asks what do you do when you\u2019re in a society where the fashion is geared towards hot pants and strapless tops? This also made me pause. I didn\u2019t know that every woman in the West wore this type of fashion. My mother didn\u2019t wear hot pants or strapless tops even before she converted to Islam. Women in the West don\u2019t all dress alike. Some wear hot pants and some like my mother wear long skirts. Why is there a constant need by many in the media to create this either\/or dichotomy between \u201cWestern\u201d women and Muslim women? I put Western in quotation marks because when we constantly compare Western women and Muslim women we assume that Muslim women cannot be Western, even if there are Muslim women like myself and most of the writers on this blog who were born and raised in Western societies.<\/p>\nZain went shopping with one hijabi. She talked about how accessorizes her clothing and goes to shops that cater to hijabis. Most of what the woman said was not new, especially for other hijabis. In fact, as I watched, I kept wondering what the big deal was. I suppose it is hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a non-Muslim who may be watching the show, but I don\u2019t know if a non-Muslim would really learn much from the show either. The same woman who spoke a few times about dressing in accordance with how her \u201cCreator\u201d commands her to dress. She seemed a bit oblivious to the fact that not all Muslims believe that the Qur\u2019an mandates hijab. This is probably nitpicking, but I think statements like that do reinforce to a non-Muslim audience a homogenous thought about hijab that does not exist among Muslims.<\/p>\nLastly, hijabi fashion stories reinforce the idea that all women care about being pretty and keeping up with the latest fashion trends. Hijabis are forced into mainstream ideals of beauty. On the website for Everywoman<\/em>, one of the stated missions for the show is to \u201cdig deeper to uncover the stories that women want told.\u201d So stories like the hijab fashion piece reinforce the notion that women want to be told about how to be pretty. Some women may indeed want that. However, I question if that should be a on news show that is suppose to cover serious issues that women care about.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It seems that lately there is a lot of focus on hijab fashion. Not too long ago, I wrote an entry for MMW about this issue. Everywoman, a program produced by Al Jazeera English, did a piece on hijabi fashion. 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