Hijab fashion influencers’ postfeminist rebranding of Muslim femininity on Instagram

Social media platforms provide Muslim women with unprecedented opportunities to create empowering self-representations, with hijab fashion
influencers emerging as prominent f igures celebrated for challenging
Islamophobic stereotypes through religious yet stylish apparel. This article
adopts an intersectional feminist lens to critically examine representations
of empowerment in hijab fashion content on Instagram, drawing on a
feminist critique of postfeminism. This qualitative visual media analysis,
consisting of compositional, semiotic and discourse analysis methods,
evaluates 161 images posted by the 23 most popular hijab fashion influencers
among British Muslim women between 2015 and 2021. Findings reveal that
hijab fashion influencers rebrand Muslim femininity into the empowered,
entrepreneurial and beautiful opposite of Islamophobic stereotypes. While
the resulting aesthetic is novel and creative, this seemingly empowering
visual discourse relies heavily on postfeminist, popular feminist, entrepreneurial, hyper-feminine and Eurocentric/Orientalist notions. This
indicates that Islamophobia is hyper-countered by reproducing normative
ideas of femininity, sexuality, ethnicity, religion and class. Ultimately, this
research reveals that postfeminist logic persists in contemporary social
media culture, paradoxically shaping marginalised women’s emancipatory
efforts to gain online visibility and social acceptance.