The overall effect gives the impression of a much taller head than one actually has. Some women think that it looks silly, like a camel or an alien. Others think it’s elegant. Regardless, it’s a fairly popular way to wear hijab right now in the Middle East.

It’s sort of like the Bump-It of hijab. Or is it like the Miracle Bra of hijab?

The controversy arises from a hadith that may or may not refer to certain hair styles.

There will be in the last of my ummah, scantily dressed women, the hair on the top of their heads like a camel’s hump. Curse them, for verily they are cursed. [At-Tabarani]

I’m not entirely sure what the hadith means, although I guess it could refer to this style of hijab. It seems like a rather unusual thing to curse, but what do I know about the will of God, right?

Anyway, I have read in various posts by various hijab bloggers that the reason that stuffed hijab is wrong is that it makes it appear as though a woman has more hair than she really does, and this is… dishonest, with the idea being that having lots of long hair is really attractive. I have to confess that I find long hair really gross, but this is mostly because I hate vacuuming. My hair has not reached shoulder length since I was in high school.

But I can understand that there are some people who find long hair attractive, and thus would think that a poufy hijab would signify long hair, and thus make the wearer more attractive. Is this deceptive, then, if the bump under the headscarf is fake? Is it the same as wearing a padded bra?

Well, on one hand, it is a bit deceptive. But so are high heels, because they give the illusion of the wearer being taller and more slender than she actually is. I have a pair of boots from the GAP – no one would ever accuse these boots of being sexy, but they make my legs look about 6 inches longer and MUCH thinner. I have legs like tree trunks, so I wear these boots all the time. Is that deceptive of me? I supposed there might be something wrong with it if I were trying to attract someone (other than my husband), but I just really like the way I look when I wear the boots. Then again, maybe that’s vain enough to count as haram?

Anyway, since I’m not a Muslim, it’s not really for me to say, but what do you think, dear readers? Is it OK to stuff your hijab? Is it so sexy that it’s akin to padding your bra? Or is it something that shouldn’t be a big deal?

How amazing is this cropped sweater from Free People? Very amazing, that’s how. Tres amazing.

You have to ask yourself, “How much more amazing could this be? And the answer is ‘None. None more amazing’.”

Layering is obviously the key to the stylish hijabi’s modern wardrobe, and there has never been a better season for layering than this one (winter 2012, for those who are keeping track). Vests over sweaters over maxi dresses with scarves and boots over leggings – it is ALL ABOUT THE LAYERS.

And that’s awesome, because so much of what I see in the stores is completely see-through. There are a LOT of really short sweaters and mini-dresses and lace crop-tops and whatnot right now at Nordstrom Rack, but the good news is that all of this stuff woks perfectly over the top of a long-sleeved turtleneck or a black maxi dress. Wouldn’t that be adorable? It would, and you know it.

First, let me define what I mean by “stylish hijab” – I am referring to a modern take on the traditional headscarf that is being appropriated by a newer generation of muhajabat. Ten years ago, Muslim ladies who were taking up the headscarf were limited to a fairly boring set of choices – large cotton squares of cloth in subdued colors. White, black, gray, and if you were really luck, taupe. Drab, dull, and conventional, these hijabs made me, a fresh-faced 23 year-old convert, look like an old Russian grandmother faster than you could say ma sha’Allah.

So, simply from and aesthetic standpoint, stylish hijab is fun. Colors are bright, accessories are sparkly, patterns and fun and fresh and as worthy of a catwalk at a fashion show as anything put out by major designer labels in Paris.

More importantly to me, stylish hijab is a fundamentally grassroots movement among female Muslims. Hijab bloggers are, by and large, women (I’m sure that there is the occasional Muslim male who blogs about fashionable hijab, but he’s likely outnumbered 100-1). Fashionable hijab is empowering, not only because it allows women to bond over a shared love of fashion, but because it wrestles the control of hijab back from men.

I’ve told this story online before, but I’m going to tell it again, because it illustrates and important point. When I was a practicing Muslim many years ago, I had to call a local mosque for some information. When someone answered the phone, I did my standard “assalamu aleikum” and introduced myself using my birth name, which was a fairly standard Western name. The man on the other end of the line answered my questions, and then paused and said, “Tell me sister, are you a convert to Islam?”

“I am,” I answered. I knew where this was headed.

“Tell me, sister,” he said, “Do you wear hijab?”

I did, in fact, wear hijab. I had started by wearing it only on Friday, and slowly worked up to wearing it every day. I think my coworkers were alarmed, but I liked it, even though it was giving me headaches. I liked being easily identifiable as a Muslim. But I really, really disliked how bloody OBSESSED men were with hijab.

I mean, I literally could not go a day without some Muslim man bringing hijab up to me in some form or another. I had registered on a Muslim Matrimonial website (hint: none of the men on those sites actually wants to get married – they either want to hook up, or find female suicide bombers, but apparently no normal Muslim man ever appears on those sites) and I received constant email from brothers asking me whether or not I wore hijab. When I went to mosque, I got lectured about the importance of hijab. When I went to Qur’an studies, more discussion of hijab, BY THE MEN.

I went on a couple of dates with a man from Egypt, and he was proudly telling me about how he had firmly lectured his little sisters about how they must wear hijab in the house at all time, just in case someone peaked through the window. Never mind that it’s not exactly halal to watch a woman through the window of her home – it was apparently HER JOB to stay covered even in the confines of her bedroom, just in case.

Anyway, I was really, really sick of men talking to me about hijab. I had taken it up, OK? I was wearing it. No one ever asked me, “Sister, do you pray five times a day?” or “Sister, do you give to the poor? Do you care for your fellow human beings?”. No, it was always just like this guy on the phone.

Sister, do you wear hijab?

“That’s none of your damn business,” I replied.

“But sister, this is the most important thing that a Muslim woman can do.”

“No, it’s not,” I snapped. “In the scheme of things, it might be among the LEAST important. Being a good person is important. Being kind and modest and giving, those are important qualities. Wearing a piece of cloth on my head, it’s NOT THAT IMPORTANT.”

“Oh, I see,” he said, voice dripping with smugness. “So you DON’T wear the headscarf.”

I hung up on him. I was angry. Come to think of it, I am still angry about that. Because wearing hijab is a personal decision, and every Muslim man that I seemed to encounter felt that my personal choices were simply up for public discussion, even if they had never met me. I don’t mean that hijab can never be discussed in public, but simply that when someone makes a personal decision to wear (or not to wear) hijab, no one has the right to tell her otherwise. Not the mullahs in Iran, and not the politicians in France. And certainly not some mosque minion in San Jose, California.

The Muslim male’s obsession with hijab is part of what makes the stylish hijab blogosphere such a fantastic place. Fashion hijab websites are by and large written, edited, and maintained by women. They are a warm, supportive forum for Muslim women to share fashion tips. While the sites are not sheltered from the male gaze, they are outside of the realm of male commentary. I don’t mean that Muslim men don’t comment on these websites (some write very supportive things, others make rather mean-spirited comments dressed up in “I’m just here to save you from the hell-fire” lingo), but by and large, hijab bloggers and readers are female. There is genuine camaraderie between all of the women on these blogs, and more importantly, there is control. Control over content, control over tone, control over photos, and control over everything.

Initially, I felt like the best term for the hijabinista movement was “subversive”, but the more I think about that, the less true it seems. The term “subversive” really indicates a movement against the mainstream, and I honestly don’t think that mainstream Islam IS stifling and miserable and hijab-obsessed. I’m not suggesting that Saudi Arabia isn’t messed up – I truly believe that it is. But Saudi Arabia is a small slice of the Muslim world – yes, they are powerful and have a lot of money, but they are also humorless and weird and will eventually run out of oil.

The overwhelming desire by some Muslim men to command Muslim women to swath themselves in head-to-toe black is a Wahabist impulse that has only been around for the past 30 years or so. If anything, mainstream Islam was being subverted by Wahabi fundamentalists.

What fashionable hijabis are doing is taking control BACK from the fundamentalists who have hijacked the religion.  They are claiming a safe place to discuss and enjoy and revel in fashion while adhering to the principles of their faith. It’s not really subversive, because wearing modest, colorful clothing USED TO BE THE NORM. For religious Muslims who want to wear hijab, enjoying clothing and fashion should be normal for those who want to.

You can’t prevent people from enjoying themselves. Iran has tried this, and the result is that people behave themselves indoors and party with complete abandon inside the walls of their own homes. Life should be joyful. I don’t mean that life doesn’t involve painful times, or that everyone should strive only to be happy. There is much to be learned from pain and suffering, and from self-sacrifice and giving. But joy is what makes life worth living. And hijabinistas are joyful – they are supportive, and thankful, and creative, and kind (I am generalizing here without giving proof, but those of you who read hijabi blogs know what I mean). Hijabnistas are the exact opposite of everything that drove me away from religion to begin with.

There are people out there, sincere people (good, faithful people) who believe that self-decoration is a distraction from the path of truth. These people come from every walk of life, and every faith. Ascetic Catholics, strict Buddhists, some schools of Sufism – every faith has a school of thought that rejects the joys of the present for a hope of a great reward in the future. Islam has its own fair share of these people, and some of them are more grim and less forgiving than others. But I don’t personally believe that this is what Islam was meant to be about.

I had a wonderful professor in college who taught Islamic studies. She was Jewish, but had fallen in love with Islamic culture and lived in Jordan for a number of years. During one early morning class, she said, “Islam was intended to be a sensible way to live one’s life. It was a rejection of a life of misery lead by ascetic Christians, and a rejection of hard-core partying… you know, the Jews,” she said (this last line got a big laugh).

That is largely how I viewed Islam for a long time – a middle road between thinking that life was pain, or that life was one giant party. I feel like there is so much room in this middle road, that it’s as wide as an 8-lane freeway, and that so many ways of being Muslim can be accommodated across its berth. Seeing women who refuse to be unhappy in their faith is heartening for me. I almost wish that I had had that chance when I was practicing – to be joyful and young and modern; to be myself, and to share myself with other young Muslimahs, rather than having to deal with creepy old Muslim men on the other end of the phone.

My husband and I recently spent a couple of days in Dubai, and ended up spending a great deal of that time at the mall. I said I would, I swore up and down that I wouldn’t set foot in a mall while in Dubai, but I finally gave up. For one thing, due to the visa-issuing process at the Dubai airport (which was insane, sexist, racist, and altogether insulting), we missed our scheduled desert safari, so had an afternoon free. For another thing, there’s not a lot to do in Dubai outside of shopping.

The Dubai Mall includes a giant aquarium where you can take scuba lessons, replete with sharks. It’s pretty bad-ass.

More important, though, was the people watching. Yes, the fish were beautiful,  but fish don’t, as a rule, wear jeweled abayas and false eyelashes (this might increase aquarium premiums, so let’s not push it as an idea) AT THE SAME TIME. So while everyone else was ogling the fish, I was staring at the local women as though they were some kind of exotic species of sea life that necessitated study.

The malls in Dubai are incredible. I’ve been to the Edmonton Mall, which is large, and includes a waterslide park and amusement park, all indoors, but I have to say that the Dubai Mall was about 7,000 times more interesting. For one thing, there were people from ALL OVER THE WORLD shopping. Russian tourists next to Saudi families shopping with African pilgrims being photographed by Japanese businessmen, who were being stared at by a Swiss couple. It was like the bloody UN, only more interesting and probably more effective at passing legislation.

After blowing all of our money (I’m kidding, it was only, like $20) and exotic and delicious perfume oils, we settled in for dinner at a restaurant called Karam Beirut. I had never had Lebanese food before, at least, not officially, and I was psyched to try it out. I was NOT disappointed – the food was excellent. We ordered a ridiculous number of small plates, including a goat cheese salad, cooked dandelion greens, some kind of kebab, mouth-watering hummus with fruity olive oil, raw beef with onions and herbs, and some other things that I don’t think I managed to eat. Oh, and Lebanese food comes with a giant plate of fresh raw vegetables and herbs on the side, for no real reason other than that you don’t eat enough fruit or vegetables. And a huge basket of fresh pita, which I can’t eat, because I am diabetic and God hates me.

Anyway, so dinner was awesome, made slightly less awesome by the fact that my husband was obsessively watching the fountain show (kind of like the one at the Bellagio, but better), which was going on behind me, and was thus NOT an awesome conversationalist at the time. I got even with him by watching other patrons in the restaurant.

There probably isn’t a place that’s better for people-watching than Dubai, except certain districts of Tokyo. Dubai is a bit less freakish, but still riveting. I wish I had taken photos, but I didn’t want to be an American asshole tourist getting in trouble for photographing women – it just SEEMS so perverted, even though my intentions are purely fashion-oriented.

Anyway, so one thing that I have always wondered about is how niqaabis eat in public. Niqaab is a face veil that covers from the nose on down, and it is not an uncommon site in Dubai (or hell, even much of India, for that matter). I’ve seen women in Seattle wearing niqaab, of course, but I rarely see them at restaurants. I’ve only seen two niqaabis at my favorite Indian/Pakistani restaurant, and both of them were busy feeding children and didn’t appear to be eating (their husbands, of course, were stuffing their own faces with complete abandon).

Anyway, how do you eat while wearing niqaab? I just figured that public eating was more or less out of the question for a niqaabi. Not so! Well, at least in Dubai. I saw one woman eating very delicately, lifting her niqaab slightly and bringing food to her mouth. But most niqaabis that I saw in Dubai simply removed the face veil entirely while eating.

In fact, I saw a number of women wearing either niqaab or actual burqas in both India and Dubai – but the burqas/niqaab were sort of thrown back over the head, face fully exposed. It was as if, once they got inside the mall or restaurant, these ladies felt like showing their face was cool. But in a cab? No. Keep it covered. I’m not here to suggest that this is wrong; it’s just not what I was expecting at all.

All of the women that I saw eating with the niqaab thrown back were having dinner with their husbands (or, men that I assumed were their husbands), so it’s not like this was a girl’s night out on the town and everyone was like “Let’s show our faces and be wild*!”.

Other images that I found completely mesmerizing:

1. Gaggle of burqa-clad women posing for a photo. I know this is a classic visual gag, but it’s pretty funny in person.
2. Group of completely decked out Emirati teenage girls, obviously on the prowl, wearing floor-length black abaya, camel-hump hijab, gobs of make-up (false eyelashes galore). One friend in the group is wearing a burqa, and I wonder how she goes about flirting with guys, or if she is an older sister or aunt meant to keep a (veiled) eye on the girls. All of them are wearing incredible kitten heels with rhinestones and glitter and have painted toenails. They are 115% more glamorous than I will ever be.
3. Young Emirati couple obviously on a date. SO cute and chic but obviously incredibly spoiled. Much shopping has already taken place, based on the 6,000 bags around them.
4. Group of Italian tourists laughing at the “authentico” sign outside of an Italian restaurant at the mall. They shouldn’t laugh, though, because I’ll bet the food was awesome.
5. Approximately 9 million Muslim pilgrims, who were all checking into the same hotel that we were, stopping on their way through to Mecca… or Medina? I can’t keep track. The groups from Africa all had outfits made of the same material, probably so they would be able to find each other in crowds. It should be noted that these outfits were a longer, more tailored version of kurta pajama, the men were each about 7 feet tall, and my jaw actually dropped open at the site of them.
6. More Filipino people than contained in all of the Philippines.

I would actually really like to go back to Dubai, just to spend a couple of days poking around, but doubt that I would be able to talk the husband into it. For one thing, he’s tired of perfume shopping. For another, I don’t think he was taken with the treatment he received at the hands of the immigration officials in the UAE. They aren’t particularly kind to brown people, or anyone who isn’t an American citizen.

*Note to self: Niqaabis Gone Wild – has this idea already been taken?

But the pictures really are stunning. It doesn’t hurt that the model wearing the maxi dresses and head scarves is stunningly beautiful, but I was intrigued that they are wearing the hijab styles made popular in Indonesia and worn so beautifully by Dian Pelangi, a fashion designer and all-around gorgeous hijabi from Jakarta.

Anyway, I’m psyched about both the maxi dresses and skirts and the newly inspired scarves – I wonder if they will make the splash here that they have elsewhere?

My fiance (who like me is not religious) sent me this photo because he knows how much I love Muslim women’s fashion. It’s from the TedX Dubai conference. I wish I knew who it was, because I would send her fashion love notes. So chic!

The Red Pill or the Blue Pill by Fashionfatwa featuring flare jeans

Is it OK for Muslim women to wear make-up? Opinion obviously varies, but I will have to admit that when I was performing my five daily prayers (plus a couple extra inserted in there every day to compensate for years of not praying), wearing make-up was a hassle, because it had to be re-applied after prayer, since wudu necessitated its removal.

But why would a pious Muslim woman wear makeup to begin with? After all, makeup makes your face look “prettier” (at least, it does if it is applied correctly). And while it is permissible in Islam to make yourself attractive for your partner and family members, everyone seems to hold a slightly different opinion on if it’s OK to make oneself artificially attractive for the general public.

Well, you could argue that I was probably never a pious Muslimah, but I can assure you that I was trying to be as good a Muslim as I could manage. But even though I was wearing a headscarf, long skirts, sensible footwear, and a heavy overcoat, I didn’t stop wearing make-up.

It’s true that wearing make-up is an act of vanity. However, vanity wasn’t the only reason that I wore cosmetics with my hijab.

To be honest, I don’t wear a ton of make-up. Even now, as a non-religious person, I wear very little makeup. I wear under-eye concealer, a very light mineral powder foundation, a hint of blush, and a touch of mascara. I don’t wear eyeshadow and rarely put on any lipstick.

There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, I honestly don’t have the time or energy to apply anything that requires many brushes or any particular technique. The truth is, I am incredibly lazy. If I had the option to roll out of bed and go to work in my pajamas with bedhead and unbrushed teeth, you can bet your sweet bippy* that I would.

Also, I don’t like looking “made up”. It makes me feel like I have a mask on. I’ve tried wearing lots of bright, beautiful makeup, but I always end up looking like Mimi from the Drew Carey show.

But why wear make-up at all?, you might wonder. I hope that this answer doesn’t sound too disingenuous, but I do it for public comfort.

I’m not horribly deformed or anything. But I do have these particularly dark under-eye circles, and the left one is permanently puffy. Without make-up, I look very much like I’ve been punched in the eye. I’ve had these dark under-eye circles since I was a kid, and for years, my mother was convinced that my asthma was contributing to oxygen deprivation that caused the circles to darken, but tests showed that my blood was find. I’m not anemic, I’m just a white person with unfortunate Scottish-Slavic heritage. We’re a very pale people, with thin skin and far too many freckles, and a penchant for hyperpigmentation.

I actually did spend a couple of years sans make-up (that’s what college years are for, after all), and the result was a nearly daily questioning by friends, professors, and classmates about my health. Was I getting enough sleep? Did I get hit in the face during tennis? Did I have some sort of eye infection?

More often than not, I was greeted at the breakfast table by the words, “My god, you look so tired!… what happened to your eye?” My response inevitably boiled down to a sharp, “Nothing, that’s just the way my face is.” It got old, frankly, to be told over and over that I just. looked. awful.

For years, I tried all kinds of quacky treatments for my under-eye circles, but you can’t really cure thin skin and bad genetics. I must have spent thousands of dollars on eye-brightening treatments, potions, lotions, and nighttime serums, but the skin under my eyes hasn’t changed. When I get out of the shower every morning, the sight that greets me in the bathroom mirror is that of a freshly-scrubbed abuse victim.

That’s just the way my face is. So why don’t I just get used to it? Well, because I don’t like having other people worry about it. It’s not JUST that it’s irritating to constantly be asked what’s wrong with my eye, it’s that people are actually concerned about it. My own mother fusses over it. My fiance hasn’t gotten used to it, and we’ve been together for more than 2 years. Every now and again, he’ll look at me with a mixture of surprise and pity, and say, “Oh, honey, what happened?”

Nothing. That’s just the way my face is.

I don’t like looking like an abuse victim. I don’t like making other people wonder about what is wrong with me. So it’s a mixture of vanity and an honest desire to make people feel comfortable. After all, with a light dusting of make-up, no one ever asks me if I feel tired or if a bee stung me in the face.

You may think that I am being disingenuous with my reasoning, and you might be right. But I can assure you that the concept of dressing well, or at least, looking good for the sake of your peers isn’t always an entirely selfish endeavor. Sarah Turnbull actually writes rather brilliantly about it in her memoir “Almost French” (which I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in Parisian culture from a funny, foreign perspective). Sarah is an Australian journalist who falls in love, and moves in with, a French man whom she meets while on vacation in Europe. She adopts Paris as her new home, and begins to try to absorb the French lifestyle. Much hilarity ensues, of course, because of big cultural differences between France and Australia.

One of the most interesting passages in the book has to do with clothing, or more specifically, with the French concept of fashion. It’s not just that French people are incredibly fashionable, because of course, not all of them are. But the idea of “dressing” in France isn’t simply to show off your wonderful wardrobe, but to present yourself to others in a way that makes THEM comfortable.

Does that sound odd? I thought it was, but then, I’m America, and Americans are nothing if not fond of making other people uncomfortable. We’re literally the cultural opposite of Japan, where making everyone around you feel comfortable is of utmost importance to living your life as a Japanese citizen.

France is somewhere between these rather two cultural extremes, apparently. Challenging the status quo isn’t unheard of, but risky fashion is unusual in France. You won’t see people with outrageous tattoos or mohawks, as you would in, say, London.

Turnbull gives a really good example of this in relating an anecdote about one morning when she was about to run to the baker’s in her sweatpants to buy fresh bread. It was early, she hadn’t showered, and she just wanted to bread for breakfast, dammit. Her then fiance, Frederic, is appalled at her decision not to get properly dressed before going out in public. In a frustrated attempt to explain himself as Sarah protests that she doesn’t care that much about what people think of her, he exclaims, “It’s not nice for the baker!”

Frederic’s concern isn’t just that Parisians might not think well of his fiancee for dressing like a slob in public. His concern is that her overtly casual appearance will cause discomfort to the baker.

So, perhaps I’m French at heart? This isn’t to say that I dress to the nines; as I mentioned, I am extremely lazy. It’s just that I do try to make myself presentable, and wearing a really light layer of make-up helps accomplish this.

I can see the same thing perhaps being the case for women who have extreme acne scarring, port wine stains, or hyperpigmentation. It’s not that anyone is obliged, really, to make everyone feel better about personal appearance issues, but what if you do care about that kind of thing? Is it OK to make yourself more presentable through the use of cosmetics?

*I honestly have no idea what a “bippy” is.

I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and my boyfriend (hey, like I said, I wasn’t a very good Muslim) had moved away to Canada, so I was on my own and trying to find a place that I felt comfortable, spiritually. I was reembracing Islam and learning to pray, spending time at a local mosque and taking part in more liberal Muslim groups in the area. I was also preparing to move to China, where I was going to live for a few years, so I was wrapping up the lose ends of a job that I had held for a couple of years and selling off belongings that I wouldn’t need when I moved across the world.

One night, I was invited out to a bachelorette party in San Francisco. A friend of mine from college was getting married – a shy, retiring young woman of mixed Chinese and Vietnamese heritage. I had never been particularly fond of bars and clubs, mostly because I am also rather shy, not fond of booze and cigarettes, and not much of a dancer. Frankly, I’m kind of a nerd. My friend, who I will call Annie, assured me that most of her friends were big nerds like us, and that the night wouldn’t be rife with vibrators or male strippers or any of the other phallic paraphernalia that is so common at the modern bachelorette party.

When I arrived at the tapas bar where the party was to begin, I was horrified to see that I was one of three nerds in a group of about 20 women. The other 17 women or so were petite Asian Americans (I, at 5’8″, towered over every single one of them) in scant clothing and heavy make-up. The bride (a nerd) was at one end of the table, and I sat down somewhere in the middle with the bride’s sister (also a nerd). We ate expensive, uninteresting tapas, then moved from bar to bar in the neighborhood. The bride was wearing a t-shirt covered in Lifesaver candies, with a big sign that said “Suck for a Buck”. The idea behind this was that she had to approach strange men and offer them the chance to suck one of the Lifesavers off of the shirt, for the cost of a dollar. That’s right – a drunk Asian nerd was supposed to go up to strange men and ask them to pay her a dollar to suck pieces of candy off of a t-shirt.

This was the greatest game EVER, I guess, to everyone but the bride, who couldn’t approach strange men, much less ask them for money in exchange for being uncomfortably close to her. I should add that my friend was actually very conservative, and to the best of my knowledge, was a virgin at the time of her marriage at age 23. I couldn’t even watch her being pushed up to the bar, couldn’t participate in the hooting and howling (although I will say that my friend seemed pretty happy with the $36 she had pocketed by the end of the night).

Bar after bar was hopped, and then we piled into our cars and the designated drivers (including me) drove to a club in some warehouse district that was obviously supposed to be very hip. The ringleaders of the party approached the bouncer, draped themselves all over him, and used their wily feminine charms (boobs) to get us entrance. I was personally just going to pay the bouncer, but apparently rubbing your breasts against him is cheaper and easier. I followed everyone inside.

The club was nothing special, to be honest. Bar, dance floor, music. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t my scene (to be fair, “my scene” is probably my living room, watching Glee, but whatever). The music wasn’t to my taste, but then, I’m not known for my taste in music.

All of a sudden, when a new song started, all of the girls at the table leaped up, shrieking and bouncing around as though someone had just started a Michael Jackson singalong or something. “Let’s dance!” they all screamed at me. Slowly, I rose from my seat and joined them, awkwardly bouncing to the beat. Until the words finally reached my ears:

every other city we go
every other radio
no matter where I go
I see the same hos

I looked around me, and all of these whorishly dressed women were dancing happily, singing along to the lyrics. And I realized that, while I was really glad that they were having a good time, I would never, ever be a part of their scene.

It was so demeaning. The pointless flirting (or flirting for the sake of getting into a club), the drinking really crappy alcohol, the skanky clothes and the songs about loose women – all of it went against everything that my feminist upbringing had taught me.

The thing was, none of those things on an individual level necessarily bothered me – I believe that women are allowed to dress however they want, and sleep with whom they choose. I believe in the right to free expression. It was just that, at that moment, I felt like everyone was celebrating the idea of being completely objectified and insulted, and I wanted nothing to do with it. We weren’t hos. We were just a bunch of 20-something career women out on the town. But there was nothing empowering about that night.

I got up and left after wishing my friend, who by then was very tipsy and down to two or three Lifesavers, a happy marriage. I went home, and I wrapped a headscarf tightly around my head. And I prayed.

*For those who don’t know this, I do not currently practice any religion or wear hijab at all. I’m a big fan of stylish hijab, but I do not currently partake.

Uber Casual Urban Cold by Fashionfatwa featuring fingerless gloves