Hijabi Muslim women internalize surveillance by self-regulating behavior in public

Evidence

In this chapter, I described how Muslim women who wore the hijab participated in self-discipline. These women often participated in their own surveillance by carefully controlling their behaviors and actions in public spaces. They also controlled their dress and volunteered in schools to dispel myths about Islam and Muslims. These actions can be seen as both a form of self-discipline and a type of resistance to their surveillance. These women treated public spaces as a stage where they tried to invert negative associations of Islam through their actions and behaviors while under surveillance. They smiled more in public, chose to wear lighter-colored clothing and hijabs to make them appear less morbid, and volunteered their time speaking at schools—all in an attempt to dismantle the negative associations with Islam. They also admitted they experienced a psychological toll because of their racialization and hypersurveillance and the pressure to respond to it. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 456

Categorization

• SEED: The women treating public space as ‘a stage’ where they perform to invert negative associations — smiling more, wearing lighter colors — is a strong frame for an essay about how surveillance turns everyday citizenship into performance.
• XREF: Connects to Butler’s performativity and to the reader’s map on racialized citizenship; also echoes how Beydoun frames Muslim as a racial category policed in public.