Hijabed
Like Me
A Non
Muslim Woman Experiments with Hijab
by Kathy Chin
I walked down the street in my long white dress and inch-long, black
hair one afternoon, and truck drivers whistled and shouted obscenities
at me.
I felt defeated. I had just stepped out of a hair salon. I had cut my
hair short, telling the hairdresser to trim it as she would a guy's.
I sat numbly as my hairdresser skillfully sheared into my
shoulder-length hair with her scissors, asking me with every inch she
cut off if I was freaking out yet. I wasn't freaking out, but I felt
self-mutilated.
I WAS OBLITERATING MY FEMININITY
It wasn't just another haircut. It meant so much more. I was trying to
appear androgynous by cutting my hair. I wanted to obliterate by
femininity.
Yet that did not prevent some men from treating me as a sex object. I
was mistaken.
It was not my femininity that was problematic, but my sexuality, or
rather the sexuality that some men had ascribed to me based on my
biological sex.
They reacted to me as they saw me and not as I truly am.
Why should it even matter how they see me, as long as I know who I am?
But it does.
I believe that men who see women as only sexual beings often commit
violence against them, such as rape and battery.
Sexual abuse and assault are not only my fears, but my reality.
I was molested and raped. My experiences with men who violated me have
made me angry and frustrated.
How do I stop the violence? How do I prevent men from seeing me as an
object rather than a female? How do I stop them from equating the two?
How do I proceed with life after experiencing what others only dread?
The experiences have left me with questions about my identity.
Am I just another Chinese-American female? I used to think that I have
to arrive at a conclusion about who I am, but now I realize that my
identity is constantly evolving.
MY EXPERIENCE OF BEING “HIJABED”
One experience that was particularly educational was when I “dressed up”
as a Muslim woman for a drive along Crenshaw Boulevard with three Muslim
men as part of a newsmagazine project.
I wore a white, long-sleeved cotton shirt, jeans, tennis shoes, and a
flowery silk scarf that covered my head, which I borrowed from a Muslim
woman.
Not only did I look the part, I believed I felt the part. Of course, I
wouldn't really know what it feels like to be Hijabed-I coined this word
for the lack of a better term-everyday, because I was not raised with
Islamic teachings.
However, people perceived me as a Muslim woman and did not treat me as a
sexual being by making cruel remarks.
I noticed that men's eyes did not glide over my body as has happened
when I wasn't Hijabed. I was fully clothed, exposing only my face.
I remembered walking into an Islamic center and an African-American
gentleman inside addressed me as “sister”, and asked where I came from.
I told him I was originally from China. That didn't seem to matter.
There was a sense of closeness between us because he assumed I was
Muslim. I didn't know how to break the news to him because I wasn't sure
if I was or not.
I walked into the store that sold African jewelry and furniture and
another gentleman asked me as I was walking out if I was Muslim. I
looked at him and smiled, not knowing how to respond. I chose not to
answer.
BEING HIJABED CHANGED OTHERS' PERCEPTION OF ME
Outside the store, I asked one of the Muslim men I was with, “Am I
Muslim?” He explained that everything that breathes and submits is.
I have concluded that I may be and just don't know it. I haven't labeled
myself as such yet. I don't know enough about Islam to assert that I am
Muslim.
Though I don't pray five times a day, go to a mosque, fast, nor cover my
head with a scarf daily, this does not mean that I am not Muslim. These
seem to be the natural manifestations of what is within.
How I am inside does not directly change whether I am Hijabed or not. It
is others' perception of me that was changed. Repeated experiences with
others in turn creates a self-image.
HIJAB AS OPPRESSION:
A SUPERFICIAL AND MISGUIDED VIEW
I consciously chose to be Hijabed because I was searching for respect
from men.
Initially, as both a Women's Studies major and a thinking female, I
bought into the Western view that the wearing of a scarf is oppressive.
After this experience and much reflection, I have arrived at the
conclusion that such a view is superficial and misguided: It is not if
the act is motivated by conviction and understanding.
THE MOST LIBERATING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE
I covered up that day out of choice, and it was the most liberating
experience of my life.
I now see alternatives to being a woman.
I discovered that the way I dress dictated others' reaction towards me.
It saddens me that this is a reality.
It is a reality that I have accepted, and chose to conquer rather than
be conquered by it.
It was my sexuality that I covered, not my femininity. The covering of
the former allowed the liberation of the latter.
This article was originally published in Al-Talib, the newsmagazine of
the Muslim Students' Association of the University of California in Los
Angeles (UCLA) in October 1994. At the time of its publication, Kathy
Chin was a senior at UCLA majoring in Psychobiology and Women's Studies. |