Shame. Men forcing women. Oppression. These are just some of the ideas people, often Westerners, including me at one time, associate with hijabs and burqas. I totally get it. What else would on think at seeing someone hiding her scalp/neck or entire head?
I can’t believe that in my youth, I’d actually think, “Why the ugly girls always doin’ hijab?” So not the point, I realize now.
“Hijab” means “protection” in Arabic. It’s also what the scarf that Muslim women wear on their heads is called. It’s sometimes tightly wound around the wearer’s head and face, sometimes “yo yo”-style as my ophthalmologist/comedian friend, Mona Kaleem, called it because it’s loosely worn and sometimes falls down, causing the wearer to pick it up and return it to the loosely wrapped around the head and face.
Then there is the infamous “burqa.” It’s a robe-like garment that covers the body from head to toe…and sometimes worn with a niqab to cover the wearer’s face. Let’s be honest, it’s scary to see someone with no face coming toward you, harmless as their delicate female gait may be.
The normal, instinctual reaction to this—including, again, mine for much of my life—was a person who wears a burqa is being forced to by her family or husband or both, or they chose it because they hated themselves. We/I assumed their families or husbands or both were teaching them to be ashamed of themselves, that they were ugly and unworthy to be seen by the world. And worst of all, it seemed to me and still many people that if you wore the niqab you were retired from the fun and free life of showing your body off. It meant you loathed yourself.
Then there’s the awful Taliban and the images of women in what Pakistanis, which I and my parents are, called “shuttlecock burqas” starting in the 1960s because they resembled a badminton shuttlecock. Those I still think are just not stylish, as some burqas can be, as odd as that sounds. So I’m not interested in them. Also I’ve seen videos of Afghani men hitting women on the street for letting they’re shuttlecock burqas (sometimes called Kashmiri burqas as that style is also worn by women in Muslim areas in the disputed Indian/Pakistani) slide or hold babies in their naked or half-naked arms lifting the bottom of the shuttlecock burqa up. Not OK, to say the least.
Family Traditions, Updated
My grandmother wore a burqa until she was 50, as did many of my mother’s cousins. If you’re a woman walking through the streets of Pakistan or India, strange men will grab you or attempt to, plain and simple. A family friend, a redhead with the accompanying complexion visited India alone but guided by local friends and connections. In Bangalore, a South Indian city, a man on the street grabbed her breast. She gave him a tight slap! Yes! So in some places it’s just a matter of making your life as a woman a little easier.
I still don’t understand, as I think many don’t, why the sexual harassment of women in medieval Arab countries resulted in hijabs/burqas for women. That seems like blaming the victim. Instead, perhaps men should have either gotten a little respect for women’s bodies as sovereign and not toys for their random pleasure-seeking. A part of me still thinks some sort of chain-mail covering for men’s crotches should have been invented instead of hijabs/burqas.
But, men control the world, still. And my being incensed at their rape-y behavior and indignation that, in response, women are supposed to cover up, is a fool’s errand. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t be. People would respect me and everyone else. It’s obvious cognitive dissonance, which I’m guessing ignites in you, dear reader, the same pathos, as the classical/medieval/Renaissance rhetoricians called appeals to an audience’s emotions in spoken and now written missives.
I thought, in a line of thinking that is still rational and obvious, non-burqa-ites loved themselves. They had it—I had it—and we were all going to flaunt it. This was especially true for me as ladyboy. I had hidden behind an invisible, figurative burqa for too long. When I came out as gay and ladyboy I had to start showing skin. To show skin was a physical manifestation of one of my favorite queer slogans, “Out, Loud, and Proud.” And for many years that’s how exposing my skin in tank tops, short skirts, and heels. The more skin, the better.
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Assault of Varying Degrees
Then I was sexually assaulted more than once, not because I was showing skin…but, well, I was showing skin when these assaults happened. I didn’t deserve it, and I should be allowed to wear whatever I want consequence-free, I thought. But then I got old, tired, and realized the world–and the men who control it–were unlikely to change any time soon. They would always be–on the street, at my door, in a restaurant–potential rapists, as harsh as that sounds. I applied this to men who were strangers, not ones well-known to me.
For just one example, a male landscape architect who worked on our yard once knocked on a sliding glass door in our family room. He asked me some innocuous question about how my dad wanted the shrubbery cut. And then he held my gaze a second too long, grabbed his crotch, and said, “Rapido.” I’m not fluent in Spanish, but I assumed, rightly as it turns out, this was a one-word request to give him a quick blow job. I was disgusted, and my dad complained to his boss, Jose, a lovely, caring man. I think Mr. Blow-Job-Real-Quick has done our lawn since, but in ski Goggles and a hoodie over his head–a kind of burqa when you think about it!
I’ve been walking down Charles Street in Baltimore in a pink slip dress and stiletto heels, only to have a car full of fratbros yell, “Hey, bitch! You suck dick!?” And throw an empty beer can at me, cackling as they drove off.
And I’ve been sitting at a bar in a mini-skirt only to have a stranger “accidentally” graze my bare thigh, and smile at me. That time I slapped his hand away, and in a rare moment of outspoken courage, I said, “Don’t you fucking dare touch me!” As I pointed at him, he put his hands up as I were a cop and had just said, “Freeze, punk! Hands in the air!” and widened his eyes. I rolled my eyes, because that meant to me, “Calm down! What’s the big deal? Women always overreact to stuff.” You’re a stranger touching my skin. That’s the big deal and why I’m “overreacting.” I wish straight men could go into a gay bar once and be manhandled. Of course, we all know men’s experience of sex would make some of them likely to enjoy it.
Now, I rarely show skin when I dress, even on my arms. But it’s not because I’m ashamed. It just happens in your 40s to a lot of us trans/women. As Carrie, once a flaunt-it-if-you-got-it dresser, says to her friend, Samantha, on an episode of one of one of my favorite shows of all time, “Sex and the City”: “It’s time for women my age to cover it up!”
Again, it’s not about shame, though. It’s about dignity. I often see young women, teenagers in particular, wearing tee-shirts so long they cover their denim short-shorts, and it looks like they are naked underneath. I don’t think, “You go, girl! Be out, loud, and proud!” as one of my favorite gay rights slogans goes.
I think it’s trashy, a harsh word I use with hesitation, but it’s the best one that comes to mind. I once dressed this way also, and I did enjoy the idea that men were looking at me, sizing me up, imagining what they would “do” to me. I was in my twenties then, however. Now I can’t help being disgusted by what random men might be thinking about doing to me when I show skin.
Trauma
I’ve had several traumatic sexual encounters and some almost-encounters that I escaped narrowly. I don’t think those happened because I dressed skimpily. I have always and will always reject with all my being that women invite lecherous attention, manhandling by strangers, and sexual assault because the way the dress, or that regardless of how much skin we show/don’t means we’re “asking for it.”
Akin to what classical, medieval, and Renaissance rhetoricians called oxymoron, the yoking of two contrary terms, I flipped the script. Or it was flipped for me. Whereas once I felt like it was a feminist statement to be as naked as possible in public, I now think the opposite. I see hijab or a burqa as protecting me from “the male gaze,” which has become a violent, unwelcome phenomenon in my mind.
I’m not necessarily scared to show skin in public now (although it depends on the particular milieu), it just doesn’t hold any appeal to me anymore. Besides, I’m always cold!
In fact, I never thought I’d be a hijabi ladyboy. But I first started wearing a scarf loosely on my head and draped over one shoulder for warmth in the chilly Maryland winter of 2025-2026. Then as a friend of mine, a Shia Zakira, Tehmina said, when she started wearing a yo-yo hijab, “This is not about modesty,” which is what even those in the Muslim community like she and I, assume non-Muslims assume. “It’s about representation.” And so the second phase of my hijabi lifestyle was too wearing a yo-yo hijab to say to my Trump-loving rich, asshat neighbors: “Hey–a Muslim lives next door to you.” And then it was–and is–because I actually think I look pretty in it. So the opposite of modesty.
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A few weeks after I started the Muslim representation/I-look-cute-in-it hijab thing, I ordered a burqa online. I tore it open and put the niqab on–a face covering part that can be flipped up and behind me, a loose but shapely shirt, and a wide-cut skirt. I immediately loved the safety, comfort, and calm I felt behind it. I wear it only three times per day to pray inside my home (Shia Muslims, like moi, are allowed to combine prayer events and end up doing it once in the morning, twice together in the afternoon, and twice together in the evening. But I fantasize and may one day wear it outside. If I get the guts.
I would never tell another person how to or not to dress, and wearing hijab or niqab (the face covering part of the burqa) has taught me not to make too many immovable assumptions about the why people dress the way they do. I still think, though, it’s weird, for lack of a better word, when a teenage girl comes over to my parents house and in front of all of us, crosses her legs and almost showing her crotch. Some of this is a personal preference. I’d rather just not see certain body parts naked in front of me. It’s like a car wreck–I can’t help looking, at least initially!
And More Protection
I also offer you a more quotidian reason for hijab/burqa. I’m Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). My five senses are acutely, often unfortunately for me, attuned to the world around me. Being around people drains my energy. I love people, but they do de-charge my battery. I am, after all, a Myers-Briggs INFJ personality type. I did a double take at this label, because I’m generally bubbly, love talking to strangers (a little too much), greet everyone I see on the street with a smile and a hello. But sometimes I don’t want to be out in the world, having my life energy sucked out of me. Covering up I’ve found, helps prevent that feeling.
When I’m like, “Ugh–I forgot I have to go to the bank!” and then trudge out the door, being partially hidden makes it feel less onerous.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve known plenty of Muslim women who’ve inexplicably become fanatically religious and donned hijabs. But I’ve also known sensible, down-to-Earth women who’ve done so–like me. I’m sure every hijabi/burqa-ite has a different experience or at least a slightly/somewhat different experience of covering up. After all, I’m queer and Shia Muslim–not your average hijabi/burqa-ite!
Before I leave you to mull over these hijabi-burqa-ite thoughts, I should note: nowhere in the Quran does it say, “Women must cover their head and face.” Hijabs/burqas are more cultural than religious. Readers over the years interpreted the term “cover your adornment,” which the Quran does say, to mean “cover your head” or “cover your head and face.” Just like evangelicals and other Christian denominations in the 1970s-90s took two lines from the Book of Leviticus, “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination,” and ran with it, declaring it an indictment of homosexuality, no arguments allowed, so did some Muslims with the above Quranic verse. But both quotes are open to interpretation and theologians and believers still argue over the meanings, or even if something was lost or found in translation.
Hijabs/burqas are not about hiding, but focusing, yourself. Just as mirrors are covered up in the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition in the home of someone who dies, to encourage the family to remember to focus on the one who has just passed and on the life of the spirit, so the niqab of the burqa is helpful to me when I pray.
I get how some people will never be able to see why either hijabs or burqas are appealing. And I know, too, that some would say “hiding” behind a niqab or feeling protected by a scarf on my head are not the “right” reactions to trauma, and I don’t want to identify with past trauma too much. I pointed out my experience of the manhandling dude in the bar just to say that now I never show any skin. To me hijabs/niqabs are just another step in the idea of clothing. I can’t swim, but if I could, I wouldn’t be at all comfortable in a bikini. It seems degrading, and I’m one-hundred percent open to the idea that I’m wrong. But an abstract discussion of nakedness versus covered-ness is not interesting to me. My feelings when I do something are.
Reverence For the Divine
Just that.
Just For Fun
An ineffable part of the appeal of a burqa–especially the niqab–is…it’s fun! I can’t explain why. Perhaps it’s just the novelty at this point, when I’ve just begun donning it for prayer. My mother is a pediatrician, and I worked in her office for a while. There was a mom who came in with full niqab except for her eyes showing. A week later she showed sans niqab, I commented on the striking difference.
“Oh, that [wearing a niqab] was just for fun,” she replied. I was confused, and frankly, a little amused. But now I get it! It IS kind of fun. Again, I’m not at a point where I feel capable of explaining the fun. But as a child watching Bollywood movies and seeing burqa ladies in some when Muslims were more prominently featured in Indian films, there was something appealing about the burqa…intriguing–especially those with multi-layer niqabs that feature up to three layers of fabric to meet the wearers desire for different levels of coverage.
The World’s Stage
Seriously, folks: burqas/niqabs, for me, are also partly performative. All apparel, human behavior, and life is, too, as The Bard noted above. I don’t think that’s so hard to see, but burqas/niqabs are very jarring at first. I get that, too. Some people don’t get beyond it. That’s not a judgement. Just a fact.
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I’m grateful for your readership! Check back with me each week here at politicalpoetrypastiche as my linguistic, literary, and generally loquacious involvement in local politics takes on a mélange of prose and poetry genres. After all: All Politics Is HoCo-al™. Join me on Facebook here, find me on Twitter at @politicalpoetr3, and follow me on Instagram using the handle @politicalpoetrypastiche.