Yes, keep telling yourself that, one day it might be true.  One day I might be able to pretend, like you do, that there is a real choice in it, but in all fairness that day has come and gone already.

Once upon a time I believed as you do, that my choosing to don the veil was all down to personal choice and if we will argue semantics, the process is of course a choice.  How can it not be?  I choose to sleep for only 4 hours a night even though my kids will drag me out of bed at the crack of dawn whether its half term or not.  I make that choice knowing my consequences the next day.  I’m not going to be that Mary Poppins I promised myself as I fell asleep listening to Norah Jones.  No, rather I know that Cruella DeVille is the face I will wake up showing my pack of hyperactive monsters.

Yet the choice of the veil isn’t as light as the choice between a good nights rest vs an irritable mother, its more like the choice one faces when a mugger holds a blade to your throat and orders you to hand over your valuables.  (been there, done that, but he never gave me a T shirt in exchange for my jewelry)

The choice isn’t really a choice when its made by force, and if the threat of a millenia roasting in the boiling depths of hell isn’t force, then what is it?  keep telling me its a real choice and I will keep looking at you in shameful wonder.  Shameful because I was once that deluded myself.  Maybe not 100%.  Maybe that part of me that was so angry that I was being forced to make a choice between 2 forms of torture was my little awareness of the ridiculous demand upon me that my gender warranted.

Somehow though, I don’t even think that.  For awhile I know I had my blinkers firmly in place, and I believed I was an empowered muslim woman, exercising my freedom of choice.

I wish I could say I laugh at that person I used to be, chuckling under my breath at my silly superstitious beliefs, but I can’t laugh.  Not when my choice to wear a veil and my delusion were reinforced by a disorder I continue to struggle with, no longer protected by the veil.

For me, the choice to wear a veil wasn’t wholly to protect myself from thousands of years of torture, it was made under the clouded perception of a Body Dysmorphic sufferer, meaning it was about hiding my face away from the world where no one had to see it anymore and I didn’t have to feel judged.

Under that veil I was nobody, it didn’t matter if I was ugly, fat, hideous, or any of the terms of description I would apply to myself, I was just a nobody.  I slipped in and out of familiar places with former acquaintances completely oblivious to my existence.  Except to stop and stare at the extremist muslim in their midst.  It was an awesome feeling to be so invisible and free of people noticing you.

I have Body Dysmorphic Disorder, being THAT faceless was a relief.  No one trying to talk to you, no men trying to harass you or get into your pants.  (maybe a few pervs but 1% of the time?  way better).  If I felt judged at all, or saw people watching me, I could chalk it up to my clothing and my religion, something that was within my power to change if I wanted to, and since I didn’t at that time, the judgements never bothered me.

My looks though, that’s another thing altogether.  Out of the veil when I see people watching me, I look away because I don’t want them to see me, to notice me, or to notice my looks.  My friends, my shrink, my family all try to tell me it’s “just in your head”.  Having read up about the disorder that I have been battling with for almost 2 decades of my life, I can see that I have what is called a ‘false belief’ about my appearance.  Or at least I can see that I fit the profile, behave the same way, dismiss the compliments as bullshit and lies.  I literally loathe compliments and the people who give them.  I consider each word as if it is coming from a poisonous lying snake, extreme maybe, but that is how I react mentally when someone tells me I look good.  Sadly I even told my 7 yr  old daughter off just the other day for telling me I looked beautiful.  I asked her to not say it ever again because it upsets me, and a few weeks before that I tried to talk to her about paying people  compliments that weren’t true.

My false belief, my real belief, does it really matter if it seems so true to me? True enough to actually make me embrace the veil one upon a time?, which represents something I completely disapprove of.

One of the arguments in favour of hijabs, and niqabs is that it removes the pressure that women in the West, a celebrity, beauty driven culture in which eating disorders are hitting a record high, and cosmetic surgery figures continue to rise, have to face on a daily basis.  Its true, I’m bombarded with images of what I should look like, and continually aware that that is not the image I see in my mirror (which is why my bathroom mirror is turned away to the wall so I can’t see it), but Body Dysmorphic Disorder could be triggered by more than just social conditioning through the media of the Western world, as those arguments would like to have us believe.

Instead from my understanding of it, BDD can be either hereditary, down to chemical imbalances, or going back to their argument, it can come from all of that social crap life likes to put us through.  Notions of beauty can and do change, some centuries it’s about plumpness, and some its about how skinny you can get, but the notion of beauty itself never changes.  A man coming to request your hand in marriage can still request to see the potential brides face first, meaning at some stage, even the one behind the veil will have her worth judged based on her looks.  Before I ever had to deal with media pressure, I had to deal with Moroccan notions of beauty, and the fact the my brown skin didn’t fit it.  My belief that I am ugly was conditioned into me by my background, one that centred around how pale a desirable Arab girl should be  (sadly Morocco being an Arab conquered country oh so long ago, follows an Arab idea of beauty, ergo youth and nice pasty skin) so spare me the lectures on the Western media, sure it sucks, but conditioning starts in words as a toddler that you begin to learn.  Ideas you weren’t born with, and were formed first and foremost by the compliments or teasing jokes, said over you by towering adults whose words seemed to be nothing but the truth to you.

Even Mohammed wasn’t above the notion of beauty, often taking the most beautiful of the captives as wives for himself.  Saffiyah was apparently quite the catch.  Looks, like money, make the world go round.  If you have none, you have nothing.

The media isn’t the culprit, even if it is the sidekick, and the veil is not mine or your answer.  It doesn’t take away the real problem.  It might make it easier to bear the pressure, but it doesn’t cure the problem because the problem is life itself.  Can the notion of beauty ever be squashed out?  maybe if we as a species wake up blind one day.  Truth is people doing stupid things, like starving themselves to death, or coating their skins in pale powder that slowly poisons them, bleaching their daughters skins, or elongating their necks in the name of some crazy ideal of beauty, will carry on, like all things do.

Still though, it might not have been the cure to BDD, but for a while at least, it healed the wound.  I miss my invisibility, and being this exposed since I rejected Islam and its oppressive fabric cage, isn’t doing my disorder any favours at all.

The BDD saga will be continued……………………..