Forever Suspect by Saher Selod

Author:Saher Selod [Selod, Saher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Discrimination, Political Science, Civil Rights, Religion, Religion; Politics & State, Islamic Studies, Privacy & Surveillance, Terrorism
ISBN: 9780813588360
Google: hIY5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2018-06-28T04:25:34+00:00

Surveillance of Beauty

The surveillance of beauty is another way that Muslim American women who wear the hijab are surveilled for their cultural practices. Whiteness has become a marker of beauty and privilege both in the United States as well as in countries that make up the southern hemisphere, such as India (Hunter 2011). This is evidenced by the increased interest and use of skin lightening creams both in the United States and internationally. Hunter (2011) refers to “racial capital” as a material benefit people possess based on their skin tone. In a racialized society, the lighter one’s skin tone, the more access one has to economic resources such as jobs or social networks (Glenn 2009; Hunter 2011). Muslim women who wear the hijab were told wearing it made them ugly; they are also racialized for their beauty.

Nasreen, a forty-two-year-old Palestinian American and mother of five, said that before she started wearing the hijab, she sometimes passed for white or a white ethnic, like an Italian or Greek. Once she started wearing it, she had some interesting experiences with her neighbors, who she considered to be her friends. After 9/11, the father of her son’s neighborhood friend would come over and engage her in conversation about religion. She felt he was trying to persuade her to give up her religious beliefs. He would try to convince her to take off the hijab. He said, “But you’re so good, Nasreen. You’re so good. And why do you have to put that on? It’s not making you better. It’s ugly.” She told me that his wife did not like her because she wore the hijab. She said her son’s friend would tell her stories of what his mother said about her. He told her his mother said, “She’s white. She’s an American. Why the hell does she have this on?” Another neighbor, an older white woman, said she would be more beautiful without the hijab.

Nasreen: I had a neighbor—to this day she’ll call me [and say], “You have that stupid”—what does she call it? “Tablecloth” or something—“You still have it on?” I sa[y], “Yes, I do. I’m not taking it [off],” [and she responds,] “But why? You’re so beautiful. You don’t have to put it on. And you know, you’re an American. You shouldn’t put it on.”

The comments reflect an association among beauty standards, whiteness, and nationality. Nasreen was told that she is “good,” but the hijab does not make her “better”—it must make her worse. Nasreen was made to feel she could become more beautiful and consequently more American without it. These neighbors implied that Nasreen was a race traitor because choosing to wear the hijab is giving up one’s whiteness, something scholars note that white converts to Islam often encounter (Galonnier 2015; Moosavi 2015). Nasreen’s neighbors acted as gatekeepers of what it is to be an American by trying to police physical beauty. By wearing the hijab, Nasreen was not losing her beauty but her standing and status as a citizen.

In

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