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Noor Tagouri Defends Women’s Rights of Self-Expression and Wearing the Hijab

Noor Tagouri. Photo: Instagram/@noor

Earlier this year, renowned fashion designer Prabal Gurung sat down for a conversation with Libyan-American journalist and activist Noor Tagouri. Among the many things they spoke about was the topic of hijab, and how women must have the choice of expressing themselves however they want.

Tagouri took to Instagram to share a clip from the interview, saying that the conversation was one of her five favorite ones from 2019. Captioning the video she wrote, “Lately, I’ve been having more conversations about hijab + how people choose to express themselves. This was one of my favorite conversations of the year with my dear friend +designer Prabal Gurung for Violet Grey.”

In the interview, Tagouri remembers an exchange with her mother about the hijab, and “how obsessed people are with it, and how uncomfortable they get with it.”

“I don’t think it’s just the hijab,” she continues, “I think we are just obsessed with what women choose to do with their bodies, and how they choose to dress. When I was working on Sold in America, one of the sex workers I was talking to told me that she had written an article about how she related more to Muslim women than anyone else because of how obsessed the society was with the way that we carried ourselves and dressed. ”

Besides her successful career as a journalist, Tagouri is also known for shifting perceptions and shattering archaic stereotypes. In her interview, she continued to say, “When I was in Paris years ago, I went on their biggest talk show on television and I talked about because [sic] there are a lot of laws against the hijab in France, and I talked about ‘I don’t care if somebody walks out naked or completely covered, I don’t think that the government should be able to tell women how to dress,’ and I didn’t realize how controversial that was because it created such a stir there, and that was just my truth.”

Watch the full interview here:

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