The Headscarf

In a culture that thrives on the idea of choice, it seems reasonable to want to choose to wear a bikini over a headscarf. I say this with an awareness that this is my personal opinion. I am not interested in anyone agreeing or disagreeing with me. If someone is, then it is just the way the world is-people agree and disagree all the time.
But I did not grow up in a culture where wearing the bikini was on obvious choice. In my family the hijab or the burqa as it is called (mind not the burkha) was a way of life for my grandmother, aunts and cousins. My mother modified this tradition in the years we lived in Delhi by covering her head with a milder cotton gauze cloth rather than the black one. But even now I have nieces and sisters who wear the hijab/headscarf.
For a long time I was judgmental about those in my family who would cover themselves. It sort of bordered on a certain kind of understanding of them and I felt that they were not too brave. I would wonder why don;t they rebel and react. What makes some women so accepting of whatever is offered to them.
And then I came to America. This was 2009.
I am still wondering what has happened in these two years that in Feb 2012 I ordered my first headscarf.
I don't know if I want to wear it forever but I most definitely want to celebrate this feeling of walking on the streets bearing a strange anonymity. It seems like a practice that defies mechanisms of surveillance and it also takes away from the pain of being watched all the time.