Cultural Expressions and Criticisms in the US Mipsterz Fashion Video

Abstract

This article discusses the 2013 fashion video, “Somewhere in America #MIPSTERZ,” which featured the “mipsterz” or Muslim hipsters, a community of young Muslims blurring the lines between “traditional” Islamic culture and contemporary Western culture. The women in the video exhibit fashion styles that incorporate Islamic elements of modesty. The ensuing controversy over this video illustrates larger contestations within Islam about fashion. This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the Mipsterz video in order to explore how the subjectivity of Muslim women is constituted through the visual images in this video, the deployment of the term mipsterz, and the ensuing debates. The analysis focuses on the visual style of the fashion and incorporates Malcolm Barnard’s theories on the connections between fashion and identity. The paper makes the argument that through the use of the term mipsterz and the em­bodiment of this innovative fashion style, the women resist dominant discour­ses about what it means to be a Muslim in the Western context. The women create a hybrid style that blends Islamic modesty and piety, hip and fashionable styles, and the creativity and anti-commercialism of the hipster movement.