You don't have to signal a social conscience by looking like a frump. Lace knickers won't hasten the holocaust, you can ban the bomb in a feather boa just as well as without, and a mild interest in the length of hemlines doesn't necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word. --Elizabeth Bibesco

Monday, September 12, 2011

I Love the Big City!

2 comments
The other day I was early to the train station and decided to do a little people watching. In the process, I saw two groups of hijabis, a tzniut woman in a snood and a Plain Amish family.

You can say a lot of negative things about the city. My least favorite at the moment is the fact that I'm supposed to be excited about my apartment's "manicured green space." However, one of the things I love about living here is that you see all kinds of people-- particularly, for me, I like seeing all the women that cover.

Now, I only ever see Amish women at the train station downtown-- I don't know why. What do Amish people do in the city?

I see tzniut women in my neighborhood and on my local train, because I live in a neighborhood that is very gay and also very Jewish. (Have you noticed that there are many neighborhoods like that? I stayed in one in Paris too... Why is that?)

I see hijabi women everywhere --it really isn't an uncommon sight in the city-- and I see niqabi women at work, because I work in a hospital.

There are a bunch of other groups of women who cover for more cultural reasons (I think) as well. Black women cover a lot more than white women, as far as I can tell. This was certainly true when I lived in Senegal, but I guess I didn't realize that black women in the States did it as well. One of my coworkers mentioned that she saw a lot of women wearing head coverings similar to my favorite kind (for work, anyway) at the Greek cultural festival.

My Woman has commented about this too. She says that while I used to be one of the few people she knew who covered --and so she thought I was rather weird for doing it-- now she sees women who cover all the time and it makes her think of me! :)