Ardern’s hijab-wearing turned a symbol of Muslim inferiority into strength.

Evidence

Clad in a hijab and a traditional black gown on the Friday after it, attire that symbolized “inferiority” and “weakness” in the eyes of French legislators who voted in that country’s Hijab Ban in 2004, Ardern’s strength was on full display. … Her model of leadership was sublime, motherly, muscular, and unapologetic. It offered new possibilities for leadership in a world ravaged by nativist populism and unhinged Islamophobia, on a stage of tremendous magnitude. But most powerfully, Ardern was being her natural self. This was not political posturing or “woke” performance, but an organic display of who she was. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1034

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s published article on complaints about immodesty and sumptuary dress codes — the hijab ban and its symbolic coding of women’s dress echoes those historical moral panics.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the immodesty-claims article: the French 2004 hijab ban codes head-covering as inferiority, which Ardern’s public wearing inverts.