Member-only story

Wearing That Head Covering Is Cultural Appropriation

Except that I had an invitation so it’s not

MaryClare StFrancis
3 min readOct 3, 2023
Photo by MaryClare StFrancis

My head covering journey began with wearing a simple mantilla to mass one day. I rocked up to church with that veil on my head and strolled right on in. Having no idea what to expect, I felt nervous, because women in my church don’t veil for mass. I wanted to veil, and so I did. It was as simple as that. It was about a year after I began to veil that I started to cover my head full time.

As I continued, I realized that it wasn’t just conservative women who covered. Being in conservative Christianity for so many wasted years of my life had caused a huge bias against head coverings. I didn’t want to be associated with that kind of thing ever again.

A good majority of the women of the world, many who aren’t Christian, still wear tichels, scarves, veils, hijabs, and other such things on their heads.

Like a lot of other savvy and sensitive people, I worried that perhaps I’d be engaging in cultural appropriation if I started using headcoverings, particularly if I wore my scarves in a hijab or tichel style that are usually associated with Muslim and Jewish women.

Here are some of the styles I have been shown how to do. I feel like the hijab style looks pretty and really fits the shape of…

--

--

MaryClare StFrancis
MaryClare StFrancis

Written by MaryClare StFrancis

I write memoir, nonfiction essays, and poetry

Responses (3)