Hello Hayaa Ladies!
Hope the end of summer is treating you well! It’s back to school season so if you are starting school or have started school the team at Hayaa wishes you a wonderful year ahead!
It is almost the end of our summer season and we have some really exciting plans for our Autumn and Winter collection, but we slipped in one more photoshoot for this collection before going on vacation for Eid. Sakina has already left UAE to visit her parents and I leave next week to visit mine. We’re excited because this gives us an opportunity to share our products with those of you who are international and like our stuff so if you are in the US of A and want to order you have a few days left so send us an email (hayaascarves@gmail.com)
Now the photoshoot we had a few weeks ago wasn’t just a photoshoot but a really awesome opportunity to meet a passionate young woman who is also an up and coming journalist. We got to speak to her about a variety of topics from wearing Hijab, to body positivity, her passions in journalism and even some great makeup tips
Arfa Siddiqi is a Pakistani born- Dubai raised independent journalist. She graduated just recently with a degree in journalism and international relations. Arfa has her own blog, (here) and also freelances to other online journals such as the Social Lifestyle Magazine. She is passionate about social and human rights such as female empowerment, media deconstruction, post colonial thought, body positivity and labour rights and uses her writing to create a conversation which she believes will make a difference.
Besides saving the world, Arfa is also passionate about exploring it. She calls it a wanderlust bug and says that documenting her travels is what got her started on her blog. Her blog then blossomed as a way of expressing herself through her writing and photography! Her instagram also doubles as her travel diary and features really great pictures
During our day out with Arfa we really got to talk about important topics such as body positivity. We spoke about the pressures of media and the problems of using only one body type in advertising
“Body positivity is something that resonates with me deeply. Our society and the media around is constantly objectifying women (and men), and telling them they need to look a certain way in order to be accepted. We are humans, we are born free, and we are INDIVIDUALS for a reason – we are all different. This constant policing of our bodies, especially women’s bodies, has had a deeply negative impact on our psyches. We constantly find faults within ourselves and are taught to hate the skin we live in. That is unacceptable. We need to be kind to ourselves like we are kind to others. We need to love and respect our body.Of course, this doesn’t mean that I advocate an unhealthy lifestyle, not at all. To give you an example, I’m not a size zero model or even athletic. But I’m participating in a marathon in about a month’s time. So body positivity just means that as long as you are a healthy individual, happy with yourself and have a healthy body image, you don’t need to be a certain size to be acceptable. You don’t owe beauty to the world, and you certain don’t owe outer beauty to anyone else. It is not your job to look pretty for others. But yes, you owe a healthy, energetic and positive persona to the people you care about. “
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