Heh, thanks for posting this. Hijab has been turned into a political football, but for most of the women who wear it (voluntarily), it’s not some horrible oppression being forced on them nor is it a barrier to looking/feeling attractive & feminine. Women are women, regardless of whether or not they choose to wear hijab.

There have been fashion shows held for Muslim women in the U.S. for all of the 25+ years since I converted, though I’ve never been to one. I have nothing against them, I just never cared enough about being fashionable to make the effort to attend.

Anyway, my point is that it’s not a novelty or something that only happened after coming in contact with Western culture. As I said, women are women—the desire to look & feel attractive isn’t something they learned from others.

I think most men want to be attractive too, especially in their younger years. It’s one of the more important parts of the human mating ritual, don’t you think? What’s considered attractive can vary greatly from culture to culture, but it exists in all of them. I would be willing to bet that even in the most remote villages of Afghanistan many, if not most, young men take great care in how they dress and wrap their turbans because they want to be attractive to the opposite sex.

Remember all the links I tweeted to AramcoWorld magazine yesterday? If you go to the homepage and scroll down through all the tiled article photos, you’ll see at least half a dozen different hijab styles, not a single of them dreary . Numerous styles have developed over the centuries, with each cultural region having their own style (not to mention all the corresponding sub-styles). Here’s a prime example, also from AramcoWorld: The Gown That Steals Your Heart