Burkha Under My Lipstick Site

I was wrong. They aren’t enemies. They are roommates in a very cramped studio apartment called my soul.

And I am the woman who wears a slick coat of crimson lipstick over a mouth that prays for forgiveness.

Sometimes, I walk into a boardroom wearing a silk headscarf and a power lip, and the women look at me with pity. They assume my husband picks my clothes. They don't realize I picked him because he lets me pick my own clothes. burkha under my lipstick

Living with the "burkha under my lipstick" means accepting that I will never fully fit into a neat box. I am too religious for the feminists and too liberated for the fundamentalists.

To the outside world, the lipstick is the mask. It is the armor of the corporate world, the signal of confidence, the Western shorthand for "put together." It says, I am here. I am loud. I am ambitious. I was wrong

It’s not the silence of oppression, as the pundits on television would have you believe. It’s the silence of being a walking contradiction. I am the girl who sips a caramel macchiato while discussing Tafsir. I am the woman who can negotiate a six-figure contract in a blazer, yet soften her voice when an elder enters the room.

I wear the lipstick because I am allowed to be beautiful. I wear the burkha because I am more than just beauty. And I am the woman who wears a

The Burkha Under My Lipstick: On Duality, Choice, and Being a Woman in Between