Kathy Chin, while a senior at UCLA majoring in Psychobiology and Women’s Studies, originally published an article on the hijab in Al-Talib, the newsmagazine for the Muslim Students’ Association at UCLA. In the article, she notes her experiences in adopting the hijab and the responses concerning importance society places on female hair. Originally cutting her hair short – “like a boy” – Chin said “It was not my femininity that was problematic, but my sexuality, or rather the sexuality that some men had ascribed to me based on my biological sex. They reacted to me as they saw me and not as I truly am.” Chin, in another experience with the obsession with hair, willingly chose to adopt the hijab for sometime, although not a Muslim herself. Of this experiences, she writes: “people perceived me as a Muslim woman and did not treat me as a sexual being by making cruel remarks.” She cites a remarkable liberation wearing the hijab, and condemns the stereotypes of hijab as oppressive as wholly false.
