Two Worlds of Hijab

Draped in hijab from head to toe and through the bottom of the face, Muslim women are expected to exemplify modesty and respect for their femininity. To us westerners, this very notion of feminine evasiveness is less than respect, it seems forced and degrading to any sense of female pride. How does modesty get confused with shame? We may ask ourselves. I ask myself this question continuously. However, when I look around me at all of the Western women who rave about their female power and rant and scrutinize the suppression of Muslim women, I am encountered by another parallel universe, a world so far apart in theories but akin in concept.

Western women are obsessed, consumed and completely involved in the physical standards of society. Every woman I know is a victim, to some degree, of society’s perpetual pressure to look a certain way. As we follow the herd, and even subjugate ourselves to tummy tucks, fad diets, nose jobs, enhancers, reductions and all realms of this superficial circus, we still manage to look down our noses on women who are regarded as controlled or suppressed. There is something strangely paradoxical in this parallelism.

There is not much disparity in the pressures involved for both worlds of women. Western women poke and probe at their bodies, scrutinizing themselves as they are blind to the powerful influence imposed by society’s superficial, sexually driven prototype. Our feeling of control is fallacious, as we strive to fit the mold which deviates from our natural self. There is nothing more suppressive, it is merely masked in the glamorous representation of choice and self esteem.

Muslim women are physically masked and we are psychologically masked.
They feel humbled and we feel free, both striving for opposite goals-but both controlled. Yet, who are the forces behind these standards for both worlds of women? Not women.

Evidently women have not come as far as we need to. Extreme’s merely provide a temporary rationalization, but we are actually draped in a costume of our own, an invisible hijab.