Dear Amira Jarmakani:

I wonder if you have seen a protest picture that has been circulating recently. It is an image of a young woman. She stares defiantly ahead, wearing a hijab that is made of the blues, whites, and reds of the American flag. I have seen her face on the outside of my public library and carried on giant signs as young people protest Trump’s America.

It’s easy to see why the image is so striking, why looking at it for the first time I feel both empowered and surprised. It is almost shocking to see the two images melded as one: the hijab - often depicted as a symbol of the monolithic oppression of Arab women; the flag - the quintessential representation of American patriotism. There are many images projected by the media about women like her, but this one is different. She wears two identities proudly - Muslim and American, and her unabashedness is assurance that embracing one identity does not exclude the other. (The real image was based off Bangladeshi American woman who says the image proclaims “I am just as American as you are.”) 

I only say this because I realized that she is the first Muslim woman I have seen represented as wholly American. I rack my brain for a piece of media that doesn't establish Muslim women in the context of victimhood, oppression, or foreignness. I come up empty which makes me so, so sad. How many people would look at this image and see an impossible body, a contradiction, something anti-American?

Now I understand what you mean by Arab women being both invisible and hypervisible. 

Sincerely, 

A student