World’s first hijabi Supermodel Halima Aden quits fashion industry

Halima Aden known as the world’s first hijabi supermodel who’s also actively associated with UNICEF to support various initiatives for the betterment of the Somali community, especially the Somali Muslim women has decided to quit the fashion industry. 

In an elaborate post in her Instagram stories, Halima talked about how the fashion industry hasn’t still warmed up to the idea of seeing a hijabi model and how their ideas of representing a hijab are quite twisted and compromised. The 23-year-old model who was recognized by the biggest of the brands all over the world said that people in the fashion industry never seemed to be doing justice with her hijab and lacked stylists who could understand that wearing a hijab didn’t just mean covering head. 

She wrote how she made mistakes by giving in to the standards of the industry because she wanted to get comfortable and be accepted. “I can only blame myself for caring more about opportunity than what was actually at stake. I blame myself for being naïve and rebellious, but also the lack of Muslim women stylists in the industry. I had to make these mistakes to be the role model you trust. We need to have these conversations in order to truly change the system,” she wrote. 

In other posts, encouraging fellow Hijabi women, and also apologizing to them for not being able to understand their everyday struggles of being a ‘minority community in a minority community’ Halima wrote how she had lost her way but now, she has found her calling back. 

Halima wants to be the first Miss Somalia in the Miss Universe pageant.

The 23-year-old model plans to take the crown at the annual international beauty pageant after accomplishing a number of firsts in her career, including becoming the first-ever hijab-wearing model to compete for Miss Minnesota and the first-ever person to wear a hijab and burkini on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Image courtesy of (Image courtesy: thesouthafrican.com)

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