Under my hijab, my hair is hidden. 

When I get it cut, I like to be the only person in the room — apart from my hairstylist — and in that room, we can do anything. I’ll take fades, I’ll take mullets, I’ll take asymmetric mess and geometric harshness. My hair is a canvas just for me. It is integral to my queerness, to my gender identity, my faith, my culture, my beauty, my handsomeness. 

My queerness is waiting in the wings behind drawn curtains. My queerness is a private viewing, attended only by my friends and found family. I love to fall into their arms and trust them enough to unveil. I love the choice of who to reveal myself to. I love to be a hidden mystery and a vanishing act, something beyond perception, transgressing the performance of outward appearance. 

I love that part of my body gets to escape judgment, even if the rest of me can’t follow. 

I know I draw attention; I have never shrunk from it. I decided to wear hijab when I was thirteen, and starting high school. For me, it is a gift, a way to preserve a matrilineal tradition instructed to me by my mother and her mother. It is both a safety net and a target on my back. Here I am, wrapped in chiffon, or cotton, or silk, a vision of terrorism and oppression, a demon from the east.  

To some, my hijab marks me as monstrous just as much as it marks me as Muslim. Let them believe in illusions. I owe no one my guilt or my apologies, just as I owe no one the hidden truths of me. No one deserves to know me unless I let them.  

To me, my hijab is the shade under which I bloomed my queerness. 

When I shave my head unevenly leaning over the bathroom sink, I can laugh at my own mistakes. When I go too long between haircuts, and my hair curls into cowlicks and tall shapes, I can tuck it out of sight. When I bruise, I can keep the marks high on my neck under my scarf where no one will see them. This, too, is just for me.

When I come out to people, they can be taken aback by the contradictions they see in me. I seem fragmented, pieces of a person that don’t quite fit into a whole. I am religious; I am a scientist. I am queer; I am a hijabi. Is it that I don’t fit into queerness, or does queerness have borders that are ever-expanding, widely encompassing?

My hijab doesn’t hinder my queerness — it informs it, and enriches it. I’m reborn lovelier and stranger every day, and I guard myself jealously.

About the Author

M.S. Dean (she/her) is a graduate student of Pakistani descent studying genetics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She writes to learn about herself and the intersections between spirit and body. She can be found sending out stories and thoughts in her newsletter, “Dear Ghost,” found at buttondown.email/dearghost and on Twitter @MyrceneDean.