Headscarves
In hope that I see people like me in great rooms
For immediate release:
Headscarves can be worn for many reasons, including modesty, religious significance, protecting the head or hair and other social conventions. Nowadays, more popular is the form of a headscarf, known as the hijab, which is often worn by some Muslim women who consider it to be a religious ordainment. The Christian Bible, in 1 Corinthians 11:4–1, also enjoins women to wear a head covering which takes the form of a Kapp or hanging veil — worn throughout the day. For African Orthodox Christians, headscarves are traditionally worn by women while attending the church, and historically, in the public.
Tell me why, though, I find it difficult to find people who look like me in great rooms — wearing their headscarves, unapologetically. Now and then, I’m left searching for faces that mirror the diversity I encounter in everyday life in great rooms that posture as inclusive. At the recent AMVCA awards filled with richness and status, there was a striking homogeneity that seemed to defy my lived experience. I couldn’t identify a single woman with a piece of cloth worn on the head and knotted behind her head or under the chin in a triangular shape.
Perhaps this exclusivity is reserved for the grand rooms in which I keep peering my face. And the inability to find people who look like me in these great rooms spoke volumes about the barriers that still divided us even in the most magnificent settings and might be the incentive to build the inclusive spaces I desire.
