Skip to main content

After the Hijab: Liminal States of Post-veiling Embodiment

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
(Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style

Part of the book series: New Directions in Islam ((NDI))

  • 542 Accesses

Abstract

Women who have worn the hijab and then choose to unveil face challenges when presenting and justifying aspects of their new selves to others. They would wear head accessories and covering that appear to substitute the hijab before going completely uncovered. This chapter focuses on the liminal states of embodiment after Muslim women have made the decision to unveil. What new hair and clothing practices have they adopted? What new aesthetic choices do they make and why? These questions are engaged with in interviews with research participants from Malaysia and Iran. This chapter argues that unveiling is not an event as it is very much a process of liminality comprised of sartorial-embodied tactics that traverse the dialectics of veiling and hair.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Bangstad, Sindre. 2011. Saba Mahmood and the Anthropological Feminism After Virtue. Theory, Culture, and Society 28 (3): 28–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, Anne-Emmanuelle. 1998. The Newly Veiled Woman: Irigaray, Specularity, and the Islamic Veil. Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 28 (1): 93–119.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bucar, Elizabeth M. 2016. Secular Fashion, Religious Dress, and Modest Ambiguity: The Visual Ethics of Indonesian Fashion-Veiling. Journal of Religious Ethics 44 (1): 68–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, Jane. 2013. Modest Motivations: Religious and Secular Contestations in the Fashion Field. In Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith, ed. Reina Lewis, 137–57. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, Julian. 2014. Transition. Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (1–2): 235–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cronin, Stephanie. 2014. Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress. London and New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Certeau, De, and Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dentice, Dianne, and Michelle Dietert. 2015. Liminal Spaces and the Transgender Experience. Theory in Action 8 (2): 69–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould, Rebecca Ruth. 2014. Hijab as Commodity Form: Veiling, Unveiling, and Misveiling in Contemporary Iran. Feminist Theory 15 (3): 221–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Izharuddin, Alicia. 2018. ‘Free Hair’: Narratives of Unveiling and Reconstruction of Self. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44 (1): 155–176.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Carla. 2007. Fashion and Faith in Urban Indonesia. Fashion Theory 11 (2–3): 211–231.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010a. Materializing Piety: Gendered Anxieties About Faithful Consumption in Contemporary Urban Indonesia. American Ethnologist 37 (4): 617–637.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010b. Images of Desire: Creating Virtue and Value in an Indonesian Islamic Lifestyle Magazine. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6 (3): 91–117.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jouili, Jeanette. 2009. Negotiating Secular Boundaries: Pious Micro-practices of Muslim Women in French and German Public Spheres. Social Anthropology 17 (4): 455–470.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fadil, Nadia. 2011. Not-/unveiling as an Ethical Practice. Feminist Review 98 (1): 83–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, Reina. 2013. Introduction: Mediating Modesty. In Modest Fashion: Styling Bodied, Mediating Faith, ed. Reina Lewis, 1–13. London, New York: I.B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Uncovering Modesty: Dejabis and Dewigies Expanding the Parameters of the Modest Fashion Blogosphere. Fashion Theory 19 (2): 243–269.

    Google Scholar 

  • Najmabadi, Afsaseh. 2000. (Un)veiling Feminism. Social Text 18 (3): 29–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ong, Aihwa. 1990. State Versus Islam: Malay Families, Women’s Bodies, and the Body Politic in Malaysia. American Ethnologist 17 (2): 258–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schieke, Samuli. 2009. Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Muslims. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15: 24–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Secor, Anna. 2002. The Veil and Urban Space in Istanbul: Women’s Dress, Mobility and Islamic Knowledge. Gender, Place and Culture 9 (1): 5–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Islamism, Democracy and the Political Production of the Headscarf Issue in Turkey. In Geographies of Muslim Women: Gender, Religion, and Space, ed. Ghazi–Walid Falah and Caroline Rose Nagel, 203–225. New York and London: Guildford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stivens, Maila. 2006. ‘Family Values’ and Islamic Revival: Gender, Rights, and State Moral Projects in Malaysia. Women’s Studies International Forum 29: 354–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stryker, Susan, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore. 2008. Introduction: Trans-, Trans, or Transgender? Women’s Studies Quarterly 36 (3–4): 11–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tong, Joy Kooi-Chin, and Bryan S. Turner. 2008. Women, Piety and Practice: A Study of Women and Religious Practice in Malaysia. Contemporary Islam 2 (1): 41–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Victor. 1987. Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage. In Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, ed. Louise Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster, and Meredith Little, 3–22. La Salle and IL: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahedi, Ashraf. 2007. Contested Meaning of the Veil and Political Ideologies of Iranian Regimes. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3 (3): 75–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alicia Izharuddin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Izharuddin, A. (2021). After the Hijab: Liminal States of Post-veiling Embodiment. In: Thimm, V. (eds) (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style. New Directions in Islam. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71940-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71941-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics