The comments reflect an association among beauty standards, whiteness, and nationality. Nasreen was told that she is “good,” but the hijab does not make her “better”—it must make her worse. Nasreen was made to feel she could become more beautiful and consequently more American without it. These neighbors implied that Nasreen was a race traitor because choosing to wear the hijab is giving up one’s whiteness, something scholars note that white converts to Islam often encounter (Galonnier 2015; Moosavi 2015). Nasreen’s neighbors acted as gatekeepers of what it is to be an American by trying to police physical beauty. By wearing the hijab, Nasreen was not losing her beauty but her standing and status as a citizen.

XREF: Connects to literature on beauty standards, race, and national belonging — relates to scholarship on Islamophobia and assimilation in immigrant contexts. Builds on: "One of the privileges of whiteness is the uncontested association of it with citizenship."

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 295