Enoughness, accent and light communities: Essays on contemporary identities

 

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eco-hijab style which “fuses Muslims’ ‘green’ values with with [sic] their visual 

identity of modest clothing, for example organic hijabs made from bamboo.”

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All these styles call for the acquisition and display of certain commodities, and 

the infinite fracturing into different styles such as ‘romantic, girly look’, ‘the 

urban chic style’

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 etc. is also visible in the images below, as certain consumer 

items and the particular way in which they are worn evoke specific identity 

labels and (implicit) identity and lifestyle discourses.  Witness the hipster hijabi 

from London: 

 

 

Image 4. Hipster style http://hotchicksinhijabs.com/

 

 

And the gothic hijabista from Finland:

 

                                                        

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http://www.greenprophet.com/2011/01/eco-hijabs-on-rise/

 

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http://fashioningfaith.blogspot.com/

  

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Image 5. Gothic style http://vaatekaappi.vuodatus.net/  

 

As we have seen above, accents are (sometimes very heavily) accessorised, and it 

is clear that the accessories that contribute to the creation of a hipster accent 

would not work in the making of the gothic one, and vice versa. For the hijabista, 

the accessorising can mean minute details such as pins:  

 

 

 

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Image 6. 

http://pinzpinzpinz.co.uk/ 

 

Just by looking at the list, we can conjure up images of different hijabistas: 

snowflakes, Swarovski crystal pins, hearts and Blinging Pinz all evoke different 

accents. All of these details provide alternative alignments with recognizable 

styles in public. And such details must be brought ‘in order’, so to speak, by 

means of a micropolitics of the self: a delicately organized collection of 

nonrandom forms of behavior producing that specific ‘self’. We shall have a look 

at a video that presents all the detailed practices of arrangement needed for a 

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certain kind of style, for a certain kind of occasion – requiring a certain kind of 

accent. 

The video is titled “OOTD #1 Date Night!”

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, OOTD referring to ‘Outfit of the Day’. 

The young woman presenting the outfit is “going out with family and a dinner 

out with her ‘hubby’” – hence a specific ‘date night’ outfit, naturally composed of 

specific details and consumer items. She starts the video by introducing her head 

wear, and the constituent parts of the hijab (Image 7). 

 

 

 

Image 7. The constituent parts of the hijab 

This is followed by a detailed explanation on what else she is wearing, starting 

with the top – a ‘babydoll turtleneck’ (Images 8 and 9).  

                                                        

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz-WEBv8K_w

 

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Image 8. The hijab worn with a babydoll turtleneck 

 

 

Image 9. The babydoll turtleneck 

She then points to the accessories she is wearing – earrings and a ring (Images 

10 and 11) 

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Image 10. Accessories: earrings  

 

 

Image 11. Accessories: a ring 

The choice of these particular accessories is by no means random, as illustrated 

by Image 12.  

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Image 12. Keeping it simple with the accessories  

Here, the focus on the accessories and ‘keeping it simple’ with them, because “I 

have kind of a lot of stuff going on up here. So everything else is simple and I’m 

wearing blue jeans.” The specific head cover worn, then, dictates the accessories 

worn. The blue jeans already mentioned are also qualified not simply as ‘blue 

jeans’, but as “just boot cut so not too tight” (Image 13).  

 

 

 

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Image 13. Blue jeans (“just boot cut so not too tight”) 

Neither does the babydoll turtleneck pass without further elaboration (Image 

14):  

 

Image 14. “Baby doll turtle neck comes up to my knees” 

Finally, we return to the head wear, which is qualified as ‘medium-size’ (Image 

15):  

 

 

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Image 15. Medium-size scrunchie for volume 

And we end by zooming into the ‘medium-size’ head wear that is there ‘for 

volume’ (Image 16): 

 

Image 16. Zooming in on the (medium) volume 

Importantly, we also get to know how to acquire (some of) these items to be able 

to create this ‘date night outfit’ for ourselves:  

 

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Image 17. Where you can buy the pieces of clothing shown on the video (caption 

to the video) 

 

Having watched this video, we now know how to create a ‘date night outfit’ that 

is ‘hijabista’. On the surface this does not seem like too complicated a creation, 

but as we learn throughout the video, there are details one is supposed to pay 

attention to (the blue jeans are ‘not too tight’; the head cover is ‘medium’; the 

accessories worn should be few). Getting it right requires the acquisition of 

certain consumer commodities that are then ordered in a particular way for a 

particular effect – and in this as in many other cases online, these items are 

conveniently made purchasable by just a click of the mouse – one’s specific and 

desired identity is only a link away. Implied in all of this is of course meticulous 

care of one’s self and attention to detail such as what specific amount of 

accessories will be successful with a particular head scarf. In ‘how to’, knowing 

what is too much and what is too little is crucial.  

Conclusion 

Although the demands of recognizability and the identity templates of consumer 

culture keep our accents in check, in a superdiverse world of global flows, 

articulations and identities become less and less predictable. The ‘super-

semiotics’ of the internet provide for the easy creation and fast publication of 

potentially infinite creation of accents – and infinitely fractured range and scope 

of ‘how to’. 

While the emphasis on hardly noticeable details is by no means restricted to the 

Hijabistas – we see it rather as a constant element in the micropolitics of identity, 

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