The Covered-Girl look is great, say two Upper West Side Artist Who Think NYC Women Should Give the Hijab a Try
The hijab is hot!
That’s the message two Upper West Side artists want to spread by encouraging women around the city to put on the veil and snap a selfie.
“Women who wear a hijab by choice are in complete control of their sexuality,” says Saks Afridi, who started the #DamnILookGood campaign with project partner Qinza Najm. “Here in New York, it’s very brave for a woman to wear one out in public.”
The artists use the term “hijab” to refer to the dress code of modesty for Muslim women. The actual face covering they use in the project is known as a “niqab.”
Najm had started wearing a hijab around New York City as an experiment, just to see what it would be like. Though she was raised in Pakistan, she and her family members do not wear the traditional head covering worn by some Muslim women. But one day she put on a hijab in her Lower East Side art studio and went for a walk around the neighborhood.
“Someone started screaming at me to ‘Go home!’ ” Najm recalls. “I was surprised because I figured people in New York would have more tolerance.”
She spent the next week wearing the hijab around town, and encountered more angry New Yorkers on the streets and subways. This aggressive reaction to a garment that’s quite common in many Muslim cultures prompted Najm and Afridi to do the project.
They launched it at the DUMBO Arts Festival last month, where hundreds of women put on the head covering and posed for selfies, posting them to sites like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #damnilookgood.
“A selfie suggests you are feeling confident and good about yourself,” says Najm, who put her hijab back on for the project and posed with the other women.
Almost none of the women who participated in the #DamnILookGood project had ever worn a hijab before.
Some, like Erin Zeitler, 25, from the Upper West Side, had always assumed that women in hijabs were being forced to wear one, and not doing it as a personal statement.
“It was mind-opening to put one on,” she says. “It was like looking at the world through someone else’s eyes.”
Her boyfriend says he was also thinking about eyes — but mostly how sexy his girlfriend’s eyes looked with the rest of her face covered.
And it wasn’t just women who stopped by to try on the traditional head covering. Men and kids also tested the veils out, which is exactly what the artists wanted.
“I would not say this is a celebration but rather an exercise in tolerance,” says Afridi. “We are not for or against the hijab, we are just posting the question about how it makes people feel to wear one.”
If anything, the artists hope their project will encourage respect for women who choose to cover their heads in public. As Najm discovered, it’s not easy to stand out from the crowd and invite stares.
The hijabs for the #DamnILookGood project were all donated by local Muslim women who also wanted to stir a discussion about wearing them.
The artists are clear that their project is not about supporting laws that require women to wear hijabs in public, as some Middle Eastern countries do. This is about women who have a choice to wear one, and choose to do it.
“With it, she is in complete control of her sexuality, and ultimately that’s what makes her so beautiful,” reads the artists’ statement on their website.
Najm was actually surprised by how much she missed covering her regular clothes when she stopped wearing the hijab.
“You can wear pajamas or crappy clothes underneath,” she says. “You can be a total slouch. It’s just very comfortable.”
“Well,” Afridi says, “it’s uncomfortably comfortable.”
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Justin Rocket Silverman