The Tale of the Hijab: Using Visual Inquiry to Explore Past Media Portrayals and See Into the Lives of Hijabis (Poster 8)

• In Event: Nomadic Visual Inquiries: Explorations in Visual Methodologies Across Disciplines and Paradigms

Abstract

Objective:
The purpose of this visual inquiry is to explore visual inquiry as a methodological tool for gaining insight into the role hijab plays in the life of Muslim women living in a Muslim-majority country. The narrative of Muslim women as “oppressed” and the hijab as “oppressive” has gone around for a long time. This view has been portrayed by many sources starting from Orientalist literature, poems, and art (Said, 1979) all the way down to present-day Hollywood (Shaheen, 2009). Hence, this inquiry has taken Pakistani women who wear the hijab and portrays their motivations behind it.
Perspective(s):
Since visual mediums such as art and film have long been used to portray the hijab in a negative light, it is only fair that such mediums are the ones that restore their image. My work takes its inspiration from Wilson (2018) as she makes a doctoral gown in response to intersections of her racial and academic identities. It also draws from Flint (2019) to transfer transcripts onto fabric and to hear the voices of the participants presenting their views on a particular topic. These inspirations along with my own history in fashion design allowed me to use a hijab as my canvas and to fill it with the words and feelings of the people who wear it.
Methods:
The visual inquiry this project relies on is a class project where I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with hijabi women about their experiences of wearing the hijab in Pakistan. I transcribed these interviews and extracted audio snippets from the interview. These snippets contained the emotions that best reflected how these women felt when wearing the hijab. A blank white hijab (canvas) was pasted against a wall and these words were written on it. The words used were either one main word from the audio or a few words that best elicit their experience. Through this, that canvas becomes more than just a plain white cloth; it becomes the women’s “safety”. In the end, I wear that hijab along with the meaning those words hold.
Results:
In this paper, I reflect on visual inquiry as a methodological tool for disrupting, intervening, and re-writing narratives about Muslim women and hijabs. I examine how the visual becomes a tool to juxtapose multiple, sometimes contradictory understandings.
Scholarly significance:
There has been literature about Muslim women in the West and how the hijab can act as a tool of empowerment for them such as by preventing harms enforced by capitalist standards of beauty (Dunkel, et al., 2010; Mussap, 2009; Tolaymat & Moradi, 2011). However, there seems to be a gap when talking about women in Muslim-majority countries hence, this project helps shed a light about Muslim women in a different context. It examines visual inquiry as a tool to shift the narrative from the portrayals in Western media and hand the mic to women who wear it so they can voice their own opinions.

Author

• Areeb Gul, University of Georgia