"They Said We Ruined the Character and Our Religion": Authenticity and Legitimation of Hijab Cosplay

Abstract

Marketers and the media are infatuated with Gen Z consumers (born mid 1990s), their media habits, their consumption behaviours and belief systems; for this teens and tweens segment constitutes more than 60 million consumers in the US alone (Forbes 2015). These consumers are forecasted to shape the future of consumption. Our study seeks to explore further the hijabi cosplay subculture and thereby contribute to the growing interest in youth cultures and their consumption habits, by exploring how tensions between religious identity and performativity of the body are explored and negotiated to achieve ‘authenticity’, a decidedly under-researched area. The human body has a cultural performative role which reveals private and public spaces, illustrates the construction of gender and race, and is a medium that transgresses the borders of art (Parker and Sedgwick, 2013). Given the role of the body as a site of negotiating identity, the study of tensions in this context between authentic body performance and religious identity constitutes a pertinent research issue.