I do not wear a bikini under my many veils. Just to make that clear.

 I sometimes hear stories of sightings of women who wear hoochie shorts under open abayas. Never seen it though. You know who is telling those stories and it ain’t us.  I admit I have seen some bad taste. Knee length skirts and capri pants and killer pointy boots and loads of make-up and even cleavage. Abaya-fied. Mostly at the mall. But I have never actually heard of someone regularly wearing a bikini under her abaya just for the heck of it.

Who makes this shit up?

You know who. Because we are so oppressed, you see stories about how we resist our oppression by showing the front of our hair. Maybe it ain’t that at all. The women who do that are not covering for religious reasons. They are covering for cultural reasons. Or maybe they started covering when they were more gung-ho about everything, but over time they aren’t so into it all anymore and they just don’t care about a few hairs here and there. But they still believe in the basics.

And the bikinis? The veiled flowers are modest but secretly sexy. Waiting to be unwrapped. Or they are huge hypocrites. People just love pointing out others’ hypocracies. Think they are so holy but they are wearing what very few women would dare to wear in public, all underneath. Or maybe it is a form if resistance to authority. See, ha ha ha! You try to control my sexuality from the male gaze, but I ain’t having it! I am gonna flaunt it to spite you! But really, I have never seen or heard of it, the bikini sporting abaya clad woman.

I have never been to Saudi. Or Iran. I can’t talk about or for them places. But I can just say that in my daily life as an authentic Muslim woman living in a Muslim majority country, I really ain’t never seen or heard of no one wearing a bikini to school under her abaya. That is just sensational nonsense.