Hijabi women alter their hijab color to avoid the racializing gaze

Evidence

Muslim women who wear the hijab are under a lot of pressure to change or control their dress because of fear of violence from strangers and pressure from family members and loved ones who want to protect them. … By changing the color of her hijab, Ayesha was responding to her surveillance. She altered her dress because the gaze made her so uncomfortable that she wanted to avoid it, exemplifying how powerful discipline can be. In this case, external surveillance became internalized and self-imposed. Ayesha did not feel she had the freedom to dress as she would like but instead had to think carefully about what she would wear in order to avoid the gaze on her body. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 347

Categorization

• XREF: Primary visceral evidence of the reader’s ‘interior experience of being watched’ — the black-scarf avoidance as micro-self-surveillance.
• SHARE: The vivid detail that some hijabi women stopped wearing black hijabs because of the negative gaze would resonate with anyone studying dress as racial signifier.