There Are 2 Types of Hijabs. The Difference Is Huge.

In the United States, women are free to make a decision about the hijab that women in other countries cannot

Iranian women wearing hijab walk down a street in the capital Tehran on Feb. 7, 2018. A spate of unprecedented protests against Iran’s mandatory headscarves for women has reignited a debate that has preoccupied the Islamic republic since its founding. Photos: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

By Masih Alinejad and Roya Hakakian

In an interview for the April issue of Vogue Arabia, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said, “To me, the hijab means power, liberation, beauty and resistance.” As two women who once lived with the mandatory hijab in Iran, we hope to bring another perspective to this complex matter by describing our experiences.

There are two vastly different kinds of hijabs: the democratic hijab, the head covering that a woman chooses to wear, and the tyrannical hijab, the one that a woman is forced to wear.

In the first kind, a woman has agency. She sets the terms of her hijab, appearing as ascetic or as appealing as she wishes. She can also wear makeup and fashionable clothing if she likes.

In the second kind of hijab, the woman has no agency. Where we lived, the terms were set by Iranian government authorities under a mandatory dress code that banned women from wearing makeup in public and forced them to wear a baggy, knee-length garment to fully disguise the shape of their bodies, over a pair of pants and closed-toed shoes. For a while, the authorities even…