In recent years, the media has worked to incorporate a more diverse representation of Muslim narratives in society, but more often gives a negative perception of Islam and its people. The media pushes the hijab to be a symbol of oppression and uses it in an attempt to define young Muslim women in our society.
Western media increased their diversity in displaying Muslim-identified characters on the big screen. However, depictions of young Muslims have almost always turned out backward or contain self-deprecating narratives. Almost all accounts in media show young Muslims dealing with some level of oppression at home or from their religion, especially women. The hijab is a garment worn by Muslim women as a symbol of faith. Typically, Muslim women in media are shown wearing one to clearly represent the character of their religion. I wanted to investigate the role the hijab plays in Western media and what it represents in the viewers’ eyes. While looking at two works of media, Hala, an Apple + original movie, and Netflix’s Spanish TV show Elite, I was able to compare the main character’s experiences and analyze the representation of young Muslim women and their relationship with the hijab.
The first film I watched was Apple’s original Hala. The American drama film revolves around the life of a seventeen-year-old Pakistani American Muslim girl named Hala Masood and her daily struggles with her Muslim identity, battling her own desires. Hala develops a crush on a non-Muslim white boy named Jesse. Throughout the film, Hala is shown upset with the lack of freedom she has and becomes aware of the problems of her parents’ marriage, which heavily adds to her struggle in the film. As she has problems at home, she goes to Jesse for her safe place and hangs out with him even though she is restricted by her parents to do so.
Next, I watched Netflix’s Spanish TV series, Elite. One of the main characters of the teen drama series is a Muslim girl named Nadia Shanaa. Nadia is of Palestinian origin and a devoted student who keeps her religious and personal values near to her. Nadia begins to like a non-Muslim boy who is the rich popular boy at school named Guzman. Nadia finds comfort in him and soon falls in love as well. She also goes to him as a safe place from her overprotective parents.
The “white savior” trope is all too familiar in western media. In both productions, a white male came in and “saved” the brown girl from her “oppressing” society and religion. The story essentially goes: the Muslim girl meets a boy, she falls for him, she takes off her hijab, he falls for her, and now the girl is deemed finally “free”. For both scenarios, the non-Muslim white male is used as the scapegoat for both girls. Both characters run towards him as a source of comfort and love from which she may have been deprived. Both girls acknowledge the slim to non-possibility of this possible future happening due to their religious and family obligations and consequences, and attempt to leave the relationship. The parents of both girls are shown as overprotective and strict about their daughter’s actions. Specifically, the Muslim father is deemed to be controlling and aggressive. In the case of Hala, her father becomes upset when learning of her friendship with Jesse and strikes her in the face. While being aggressive and controlling her, he is also shown as a liar, hypocrite, and cheater to his family and wife. He has a whole other family with a white woman, as well as a young daughter. In the case of Nadia, her Arab father is also shown as an angry controlling man. Oftentimes, the brown man is shown in a negative light while the white man is glorified with good nature and deemed “savior”.
For both plots, the Muslim female character takes off her hijab in multiple ways. The hijab does not just mean the headscarf but also the factor of modesty and keeping a certain separation from the opposite gender in situations. Once the character takes off her headscarf, the boy falls in love with her, and then they have intimate relations without marriage. The Muslim girl not only takes off her hijab but also chooses to defy certain parts of her morals and values along with it. In a sense, the media is showing the Muslim girl as weak in a sense of her values and morals. It also tells that once she takes off her hijab and runs off to a boy, she is much better off and liberated.
The media creates to make the main female Muslim character uneasy of her religious identity and depicts the character as uncomfortable in her hijab. At the start of the second season of Elite, Nadia is seen at the club with her peers and she goes into the bathroom to apply some lipstick. Her friend encourages her to take off her hijab stating, “doesn’t it feel good?” Nadia takes off her hijab and walks out onto the dance floor of the club, as the music starts playing as she walks out slowly. This moment reveals the message that Nadia is liberated from her hijab and is seen positively. As she walks out, she makes eye contact with Guzman, who is gawking at her beauty. This scene gives a correlation between taking off the hijab and becoming attractive to males. It glorifies male attraction and attempts to connect it to freedom for the woman.
In the case of Hala, at the end of the film, she is seen leaving her college dorm smiling, but without the hijab as the camera zooms out and cuts to the credits. This scene shows her living her best life without the hijab, it gives a further narrative of how removing the hijab liberates her from the “oppression” she experiences. Both these instances depict the hijab as a tool that stands in the way of liberation of these women and that they won’t fully be happy until removing it. As soon as the character takes off her hijab and reveals her hair, she is shown “free” from the constructs in her life. Media such as Elite and Hala, define the hijab as a block from freedom and self-expression.
The West’s perception of young Muslim women is that they’re oppressed and not under their own free will of practicing Islam and wearing the hijab. They claim it is a way to mask a girl’s beauty and keep herself covered from the world. People believe what they see in the media and use it to make their opinions on Muslims and Islam. Therefore, a majority of the west has a negative perception of Islam, leading them to make certain biases on the Muslims. In the west, it is glorified that a woman wears whatever she chooses, however in the case of Muslim women, this idea changes. The hypocrisy of the west is when a woman chooses to wear little to nothing she is praised, but when a woman chooses to cover up she is put down and seen negatively by society.
The media shows only one side of the Muslim narrative. While there are definitely accounts of Muslim women in such situations like the ones depicted in media today, it is still not a fair and accurate representation of the entire religion of Islam. The majority of Muslims disagree with the representation of Muslim characters in media, especially the narrative brought upon Muslim women and the hijab. From Aladdin to Hala, there are countless examples of the misrepresentation of Muslim women in western media. There is a definite need for a more accurate representation of Muslim women and how they interact in society.
Western depiction of the hijab is a misinterpretation of what it actually represents. One who wears the hijab observes a sense of modesty and does it in devotion to God. The hijab and modesty of Muslim women serve to benefit women and play as a protection for them against the male gaze and people’s opinions. The reality is that most Muslim women are not oppressed and wear the hijab for their own free will and for the sake of God. Hijabs are the Muslim woman’s crown and they look damn good wearing it too.