The Tricky Business of Blending In

         I love fashion, and I'm kind of obsessed with going shopping. So obsessed, I feel like I have to look at everything in the entire store before I can even leave it. I honestly thought it was something everyone did until people started pointing it out to me. I couldn't fathom going into a store, looking at a few things, maybe buying a few things too, and just leaving. Just leaving! What if there was something even better than what I had bought at an even better price that I had missed? What if there was something that was just perfect and I would love but I just hadn't seen it? It really bothered me for some reason, although now I am learning or at least trying (it's the effort that counts right?) to start letting go a bit. 

         I think I have a tendency to want to have all the possible options in front of me, because I try to dress modestly. Now, I'm not saying every other Muslim in the world is just like me. It's a personal thing, everyone has their own limits and way of dressing they are comfortable with, and religion may not even always play a role in it. I try to practice modesty with my clothing and it can make shopping pretty difficult sometimes. I think whether I'm "marked" as Deborah Tannen calls it in her essay "There is no unmarked woman" depends on where I am. I'm always marked at school, at the store, at a restaurant as a Muslim because of my hijab, but that part of being marked is intentional. One of the reasons I wear hijab is so people can know that I am Muslim and see my actions as those of a Muslim. One way I don't really want to be marked is with my clothing being seen only as me trying to cover up. I am trying to cover up, but its hard to wear covering clothing and the trends you love at the same time. Not that its impossible, just that it can take a lot of brain power, for example, to make an outfit adjustment like a cardigan look like a style choice rather than me just needing something to cover my arms. 

        I think everyone does have places they can go and not be marked at all, however, including me. If I go to a mosque or a Muslim country I can blend in with the crowd (of women at least) like no where else. I don't know how "tolling" being marked all the time necessarily is, but being able to melt into a group of people and go unnoticed every now and then isn't too bad of a feeling. And so I think when Tannen concludes that women don't " have the freedom to be unmarked" (Tannen 556) is only partly true. Maybe in business and political settings women don't have the luxury of being unmarked in comparison to men (yet), but I think there are still settings where women can feel unmarked, at least among other women.