Muslim women are repeatedly told that beauty is equated with showing more of one's body and the practice of wearing the hijab is beneath American standards of beauty. It creates assumptions of what constitutes American beauty and situates Muslim women outside of this norm. Thus through a rejection of American cultural norms such as beauty, the hijab works as a racializing agent on Muslim women's bodies. One of the privileges of whiteness is the uncontested association of it with citizenship and its unquestioned rights to resources (Garner 2006): you are viewed and treated like a valued member of society, something that has been denied to racialized groups in the United States.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 247