The Choice! Is it Truly Ours?

By: Beenish Khurshid , Montreal Canada

I had a dream recently. I was in a large lecture hall, and the director of my company was the lecturer. The class was on clothing. The lecturer began by asking the class: what is the purpose of clothing?

One person said to look beautiful. Others started mentioning other ideas as the lecturer picked on me - "pay attention" (I was). Turn your chair, and so on.

The focus soon shifted to the oppression of the Hijab and the oppression of Muslim religion and cultures in general. I struggled to speak up and the lecturer did not give me a turn. Then the lecturer gave a student a sheet of paper. Role play. She got up, and asked a Hijabi woman: are you more beautiful, or am I? And started explaining how she believes she is more beautiful, prompting for an answer. Some women in the class tried to defend Islam. Finally, frustrated at not having had a voice in the debate, made to feel inadequate by the lecturer, and having a clear argument in my mind, I spoke up.

What is the purpose of clothing?

To some, it is to look beautiful.

To others, it is to look sexually attractive.

To others, it is to show off how ripped (muscular) they are.

To others, it is to conform to societal norms.

To yet others, it is to address natural feelings of shame and not feel exposed.

But in today's western society, most of us do not decide what we wear. It is decided for us. Some clothing choices are decided by long standing social norms - men wear suits to interviews, or women wear dresses to weddings. Most, today, are decided for us by the fashion industry. And what are the motivating goals of clothing in fashion? To be attractive. To be sexy.

Why is it that T-shirts often have text written on the chest and not on the belly? Why is it that we must wear stretch-fit yoga pants to the gym, and bikinis to the beach? It is something the fashion industry has decided for us, and decided that these clothes will make us look most attractive. And almost nothing else is available on the shelf. (Anyone who has read up on healthy gear to wear while exercising knows that it is actually healthier to wear loose fitting clothes while working out.)

So while the vast majority of people in the world wear what they are told to wear, Muslim women in the West make a choice for themselves, on what clothing means to them, and on what how and when they are going to wear it. They make a choice to regain control of their bodies. To decide who looks at them, when, and what people get to see. And they decide what purpose they are operating under at any given time: to look beautiful, to look attractive, to preserve their right to bodily privacy, to be modest, or to obey God.

Let's start taking control of the narrative, and recognizing that when we put our minds to it, we can put oppressive ideologies like "secular clothing" (and Bill-21 in Québec) to peaceful rest.