Hijab and Independence
Most of you probably don’t know this, but this past week I began wearing hijab. I feel like I should have membership to some exclusive club by now because before, I could blend in and no one knew I was Muslim. Now they know and I can’t hide it anymore. The reactions are hilariously pathetic and awesome. I want to share a few with you.
Woman: I really hate shopping at this one store because there’s lots of foreign workers there and you never know if they’ll speak English. I mean, I’m so glad you do. I mean. God. Oh, God. I just mean that, um…oh God *hyperventilating at this point*
Me: It’s okay, really…
I get the smile and the soft spoken “hi” that we retail workers use when we think our customer doesn’t speak English. The shock on their face when I ask something like, “Credit, please” or “Do I hit cancel for credit?” without an accent is priceless.
I also love how people talk really LOUDLY because they think I don’t speak ENGLISH. Because we all know if you don’t understand a language, hearing it LOUDER increases your chances of understanding it.
People act like I have cooties or something. They walk as far away from me as humanly possible. One woman even saw me in an aisle at the store, stopped, and ran away. It’s like they think if I sneeze they might catch the Islam if they get too close to me.
Rednecks: basically, my rule of thumb is that if I can smell your body odor from across the room, your opinion on anything doesn’t matter.
But this post isn’t all fun and games and laughing at stupid people. I’ve been thinking about how difficult it is to find work while wearing it or even keeping a job while wearing it. I work in retail, and while I can remain fashionable and wear my store’s clothes even while wearing hijab, my sales would be nowhere where they used to be. People are unfriendly, and unwilling to listen to my sales pitch like they were before. Which makes me think about how lucky the girls who wear it are who have a family to support them. Many girls I know who wear hijab have daddy’s money to pay their bills, and then their husband’s money. Working for them is more like fun money than it is a necessity.
I guess I’m talking about the AAPs – Arab American Princesses. But this isn’t just limited to Arabs. The girls who are 20 and in college but haven’t ever held even a part time job. The girls who will never have to worry about paying their tuition or cell phone bills, or even buying food or paying for health insurance.
In a way, I envy them and even hate them a little bit. Until I realize that this is a method of control, whether it’s intentional or not. I hear a lot of these girls complain that they can’t be independent working women. Part of me wants to tell them to shut up – take the money and count your blessings, while another part of me feels bad for them. Which is worse – the constant stress of finding or keeping a job and paying your bills, or being controlled and unable to be independent if you so choose?
I stress about financial issues pretty much all the time and often find myself wishing I had the safety net to fall back on that many affluent Muslim girls have. But then I realize that if I had to live even a month in their shoes, I’d probably be just as miserable. I fully enjoy being able to do whatever I want without really having to answer to anyone. I just hope these girls also realize that a month in my shoes and they’d probably be begging to go back to how things used to be as well. I wish it were easier to find a balance.
It must be an interesting change wearing hijab out in public. People react so strangely not only to Muslims, but pretty much to anyone of another race or with an accent. My French teacher has a very obvious accent from growing up and living most of her life in Bordeaux, but what people can’t tell based on her accent is that she’s been living here for over a decade and studying English for 15 years. Her English is better than that of most Americans, regardless of her pronunciation of r’s and l’s and whatever else.
As a cashier, I once had a customer who was wearing hijab and then had to go to the courtesy desk for a rain check on a certain item. When one of the courtesy employees came over to ask me a question about her item, this was how she described the woman: “Do you remember that WHITE woman wearing the African dress? You must remember her, she’s white but she’s wearing like this African or Indian head covering thing.” There was so much wrong with that statement that I couldn’t tell if she was mistaking the hijab for a sari, mistaking Muslim for Indian or perhaps Arab for African… it took me a good ten second pause before I was able to respond.
As far as the independence issue and keeping a job, I think you’re right that you’d get sick of living in their shoes and vice versa. It’s easy to pass judgment on someone for living very differently from the way you do because not only is it difficult to understand what it’s like to be them, but also what it was like to grow up in their shoes. Those girls have most likely been living with that same familial situation, same financial situation, and same set of values their whole lives. I’m sure it’s not that they’re lazy and don’t want jobs, but that it really is difficult to find one and that they’re not used to dealing with that kind of pressure. Socioeconomic barriers can be even stronger than cultural divides sometimes.
Well I definitely didn’t know that you can wear Hijab, whenever you wanted to [ i mean I didn't know that you could choose to do that] . Yeah! my knowledge is outdated.
And really I had no clue about all of the issues you mention here.
I am glad you did.
Real people struggle there way out of any problems. :)
Have a nice day girl! – I hope that’s a good sentiment right now.