Uncovering Modesty: Dejabis and Dewigies Expanding the Parameters of the Modest Fashion Blogosphere

Abstract

Since the early 2000s modest fashion blogs and social media and related e-commerce have constituted a zone of women-led fashion mediation fostering dialogue within and across faiths and between religious and secular practitioners. Premised on a discourse of modest fashion as individual choice rather than compulsion, modest fashion incorporates style considerations into the quotidian practices of “everyday religion” characterized by blending, syncretism, and contradiction. This article examines how modest fashion discourse responds to the increasing numbers of women who choose to discard what have come to be the key signifiers of religious female modesty in Islam and orthodox Judaism, the hijab and the wig or hat, made prominent online by the wardrobe changes of two transnationally prominent USA-based bloggers, Nina Cohen of 'alltumbledown' and Winnie Détwa of 'winniedetwaland'. Interviews and blog and social media analysis demonstrate that contra mainstream orientalist presumptions that women who remove the veil have been saved from Muslim civilizational alterity, online debates within modest fashion seek to regard these modified forms of self-presentation as widening, rather than quitting, the frame of modest embodiment

To be Myself and have My Stealthy Freedom: The Iranian Women’s Engagement with Social Media

“…As mentioned above, "My Stealthy Freedom" was created in 2014 by an England-based journalist from the Iranian diaspora, and has since then received over 924,000 "likes," becoming a hot issue both in and out of Iran. By addressing the lack of "freedom of choice" regarding the hijab policy, it has gained the attention of many Iranian researchers (Hamzehei 2014;Karimi 2014;Khiabany 2015;Koo 2014;Lewis 2015;Novak & Khazraee 2014;Sreberny 2015).…”

“…In particular, I analyze the Facebook page "My Stealthy Freedom," where women post pictures of themselves without their hijabs and share their stories. Although "My Stealthy Freedom" has been gaining much notoriety in the press and academia (Hamzehei 2014;Karimi 2014;Khiabany 2015;Koo 2014;Lewis 2015;Novak & Khazraee 2014;Sreberny 2015), the voices of women as subjects has been missing in these studies. It is this void which I seek to fill, by connecting women's online participation with developments in the offline social movements in Iran.…”

Commodifying feminism: Economic choice and agency in the context of lifestyle influencers and gender consultants

“…These two identities, I was informed, should not be confused with each other because doing so could lead to problems, such as hateful messages from online readers who don't understand that the blog self is not real. Cultural ideas of how “real life” works, outside the sphere of the blog, constantly provided the participants boundaries for what could be said and done online (Lewis, 2015). Thus, becoming successful within Internet culture required negotiations with respect to privacy boundaries, such as giving personal information about one's family, and being open with oneself in relation to perceived “failures,” including mental illness, weight gain, stretch marks, or pictures of one's face without make‐up.…”

Women undercover: exploring the intersectional identities of Muslim women through modest fashion

“…Similarly, there is a lot of scholarship that focuses on the veiling practices of Muslim women. Setting aside the many studies that have been done by Reina Lewis, Elizabeth Bucar and others in Muslim countries, this review looks at studies done in WENA and in each one the focus is on the practice of veiling rather than the individual and how her intersectional identities inform her sartorial practices and broader identity (Anderson & Greifenhagen, 2013;Lewis, 2015c;Mansson McGinty, 2014;Marcotte, 2010;Peterson, 2016;Ramachandran, 2009;Williams & Vashi, 2007). There are some recently published articles that mention intersectionality or recognize there is a lack of focus on intersectionality (Lewis, 2018b(Lewis, , 2019) however, no one has taken a deeper look at the whole person defined by her various social identities.…”