Sindel Hijab

“Everyone has black hair, so I want to go to the salon and make mine brown!”

"My hair is so curly and wavy. One day I’m going to straighten it permanently.”

“You’re like the Pillsbury character. Anytime we poke your arm and it shakes, you giggle.”

“I am flubber!”


As a child. I always hated my unmanageable wavy thin hair. I am South Asian after all; I was supposed to be blessed with long, silky, Sindel-esque (dark) locks with preternatural powers. Naïve me never took genetics into consideration, ever. How was I not aware that both my parents had curls in their hair and that I was just a creation mirrored after some of their features?

Let’s move forward to what happened a year ago! I was in the public bathroom trying to fix my hijab, and two women came by to wash their hands and fix themselves up. They both had lavishly commercial worthy hair that I was only able to appreciate for a few seconds before they left.
I was still in the bathroom trying to fix my damn hijab because it would not stick to my head. And then I noticed something about my scarf that I probably was not aware of for a very long time.

Over the years, I did not care to “fix” my hair. I no longer wanted brown hair, and I no longer wanted to straighten the crap out of my curls. Those things no longer concerned me; so as I looked at the mirror in that public bathroom, and I realized that it was thanks to my hijab that I felt that way. I never had to compare my physical appearance with others (to some extent). Have dandruff? Wear the hijab! Have a bad hair day? Wear the Hijab! Don’t want to put effort into your looks? Wear the hijab! Have lice? Wear the hijab!!! :p.

I’m joking, but in all seriousness, for a person who compared herself a lot, that was one thing I never had to compare myself with. Also, because I personally believed my hijab was meant to cover more than my hair, I realized that I never cared for how my body looked either (I also think this has to do with the fact that we never had a weight scale in the house).  I always got told that I was skinny or I was supposedly healthy. I am neither, though. My eating habits are terrible (munch, munch, munch), and I’m not tone at all. Some of my family used to always poke me because my skin would (and still does) bounce when touched. Even now, I’m very happy that I can associate myself with flubber.  :D.

So anyway, thank you hijab for doing something that I was completely unaware of.