New hijabis and your facebook pictures

First of all I'm proud of all you knew hijabis. I definitely recognize the struggle you girls have in making the decision and the courage you muster up in those first few days of adjustment. I definitely remember my first days filled with ambigious emotions and my highs and lows. I've always thought that new hijabis in the West don't get enouch credit for being gutsy. You go girl!

Now that my disclaimer has been stated, how many times were you annoyed to have to take down pictures from your very carefully put together facebook albums because of a new hijabi? You see it's quite the art to be able to narrow down 500+ pictures from a trip for example into 60 facebook appropriate ones. Lots of factors go into consideration when creating a facebook album viewable to friends that I can be satisfied with. I have to make sure I don't have too much redundancy and that every highlight is given its appropriate representation. There should be a little bit of beauty, a little bit of humor, a little bit of sentimentalness (is that a word? if not what's the right word here?), and not too much cheese. It takes skills people! So yes, it can feel like a pyramid of cards being knocked down when I have to remove even one picture...the most common reason is that a new hijabi is in town.

In the past it's happened to me with maybe three girls. Actually though now that I'm writing this post and giving it more thought I just realized I've still got some pics from my really old albums of uncovered girls who are now hijabis. For the most part though it was never more than a handful of pictures that are affected. This one picture I was rather bitter about because it was super funny. If I attempt to explain it it won't sound funny so I won't, but anyway I was annoyed and the girl's position in the picture made it impossible to just crop her out and still be funny. I have another picture where I was able to photoshop a hijab on the girl. It was a big family group picture from my cousin's wedding thus it was just her head poking out from the back row.

About 2 days ago I get a facebook message from a distant cousin of mine letting me know she started wearing hijab and if I can please take down the pictures of her in my facebook album. My first reaction was that I was happy for her especially because it was nothing I saw coming for her in the near future. There was a time when I was a little worried about her but alhamdulilah she's atleast made some positive changes for her to get to this point. My second reaction was "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

This chick is in my prettiest albums! She went to Egypt with me, she went to Aqaba with me where we stayed in the Movenpick! Scuba diving, snorkeling, the world cup matches! We hung out a lot over the summer in Jordan.........my albums will be decimated, I might as well completely remove them. It's not even like I can photoshop a hijab on her cause she was showing a lot more than just the hair on her head. I'd have to photoshop a whole abaya on her and my art skills are too kindergartenish. I might as well draw a filled in rectangle over her which is easy to do using the paint program.

I should make a new facebook albums titled "remainder of albums taken down because of new hijabis" with the remnants of what is left. Damn her why couldn't she have been a mit7ajba then!