The first two weeks of ASTU 100 at University of British Colombia consisted of going through our first text, a graphic narrative written by Marjane Satrapi titled Persepolis. This comic styled narrative contains Satrapis memories of living in Iran as a child during difficult times to show the new western world she lives in a new perspective on her home country. One specific aspect of Persepolis that I noticed immediately (because it’s in the beginning of the book) is the first chapter, “The Veil”. This introduction to the comic immediately changed my perspective on the idea of the Hijab and what I thought I knew about it. Satrapi explains basically that it wasn’t her choice to start wearing the Hijab at her school and that many of the children were confused by it and her images immediately made the whole idea of a Hijab more “human” to me, in other words made me see it as more innocent and simple as I saw the image of the children playing with it on page 1.

This first chapter especially reminded me of events occurring today such as all the drama in France surrounded around the “birkini”. This particular event reported here, (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/24/french-police-make-woman-remove-burkini-on-nice-beach) shows french policemen making a women remove her clothing that resembled the “birkini” which of course sparked outrage throughout the internet and social medias. Basically, France has a ban on the “birkini” on public beaches as it’s seen as a danger in public, France also has a ban on any sort of veil or muslim dress/covering in public schools. Comparing these two instances, one where a young girl is forced to wear a veil and another where a women is forced to not wear that same veil or “covering” is actually quite confusing. I find myself at a cross roads when trying to assert my opinion because when it comes to the situation in Persepolis I do not want Marji to be forced to such extreme values created by islamic radicals but in the case of the women in France I am outraged that wearing the same veil is illegal, shouldn’t everyone be able to express their own values freely? This caused me to think of the idea of a Hijab from different angles and wonder what my real opinion of it was.