Talking to Rachid now, almost exactly a year later, she told me she’s trying not to pay much attention to the government’s actions because “it will be too overwhelming.”
“They keep pushing forward some laws,” she said. “I often think that I should just leave.”
Rachid said she struggled to find a job that would accept her wearing a hijab — “I was always declined once they saw me in interviews” — but eventually found one in retail. She said the proposed ban on hijabs in national sports in France is ridiculous. “Because most of us can do sports as well as non-hijabis, it’s not something that will stop us from doing it,” she said.
Rachid said Hadid and the photographer are friends, and the supermodel had asked him if she could post the photo of them. So Rachid and the other women in the photo were told beforehand that she would post the photo to her nearly 50 million followers.
Head coverings, such as balaclavas and headscarves, have been having a huge moment in fashion, but stories about trends often ignore the reality of actual hijabis. That’s part of the reason Hadid’s post was important.
Hadid’s Instagram caption read, “Although different forms of the hijab and head coverings are starting to make an appearance in fashion, let’s still remember the daily struggle, abuse, and discrimination Muslim women face on a regular basis because of their faith and what they stand for. To each woman’s body, stand their own opinion on what they should do with it. That is NO ONES decision except for theirs.”
Bella wrote that she had always desperately wanted to see the type of image and representation she saw in Bint Ali’s photo.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ikrd/julia-fox-hijabi-fashion