Into Hijab

~~As-Salām `Alaykum, as of May 6th, 2010, It have been 49 days in Hijab. Not changing. New post on my experience soon. ~~

Original post:

For the past 14 days I have gone into Hijab.
No i am not practicing Islam, or thinking of converting or studying or anything so religiously affiliated.
I am still Hindu, do not think I have strayed far from Brahman.
More philosophically, spiritually, personally, wandering with a sense of purpose.

I have been researching hijab for the past couple months and have been sincerely feeling something blossom, almost manipulatively, inside my veins.

Wanting to know. wanting to understand what other women feel. to feel a connection to women on this earth in different ways. I want to be able to understand the oppression, the discrimination, the self-consciousness within us. Us as humans, as women.
Religious oppression. Racism. Sexism. Wrapped in an ancient blood-stained package.
through a fish-eye of course. Islam is blood stained through victims of colonialism, conquest, and I-own-this-land tyranny.

I understand first and foremost the split ideas on Hijab. But i also feel an attraction towards this sentiment of modesty and liberation in a land where we saw the birth of wet t-shirt contests.
radical liberation.
intolerance of subjectivity.
this "wearing of the hijab prohibits you from treating me as a sex object."
possibly. maybe. im checking it out.

On many other levels I feel need to be self-adressed. Beauty.
My view of what beauty is. Yes, I can see beauty in everything, in everyone for all reasons.
Under all circumstances. Flowers hung on dung. "poverty". the ways of the world.
Women as warriors, strength, resiliency, love. I love all of it.
But to me, for me, inside of me; I have always seen beauty in skewed mindset according to my hair, my eyes, my assets most accentuated, what i can do to stand out today, to make myself look good in the mirror based on what ive seen that is most beautiful, or based on the day, most fashionable, new, sexy, girlish, boyish, traditional, fetching, classic, all of it.
Its worse having to wake up and decide what i should be wearing. and not that i care more than most, actually less than most. but when it comes to my idea of what is beautiful on me, it isnt all-inclusive.
Its the few and far-between that make it all worth it.
So,
I propose this as my way of forcing a new pair of glasses on a girl who refuses to wear any.
Maybe I'll see straighter, clearer, with more love, with more direction, truth, without obscenity, without judgement, without expectation, and with more room for karma.
To acknowledge my best, my all, everything, to see my own imperfections as they are as beauty. to re-identify myself as beautiful.
To love parts of myself that have been neglected. To love them the way I so desperately crave someone to love them, or the way they have loved them.

On another level, I also want to believe in this liberation.
I need to see to believe, to feel to believe, to experience what is hijab,
to really know whether or not, for me, this radical liberation, this radical resistance to the subjectivity of women, to the hype of sex in our culture, can be fought by refusing to be made an image out of, and making the image for yourself.

I will continue in Hijab for as long as it takes.
the idea is at least, a month.
Tashakor,

Inshallah~

B