preview

Teenage Girls in Society Essay example

Best Essays

Portier describes tradition as a language, an act, or even an historical text handed to us by a family member, the people we interact with on a daily basis and the cultural setting we are a part of. Such tradition, defines who someone is best by dialogue because tradition can give enough illustration of something or give enough room to compare between past and present traditions. (20) Tradition, helps us question and answer the possibilities of human existence and experience through the problems and situations we encounter every day, which life goes on according to what you know as a tradition and influences your everyday life. It acts as an answer to everyday problems or situations that can be answered by past traditions that you become …show more content…

She wants people to see that not everyone who claims to be of the Islamic faith is automatically following the principles of that religion. She has grown up a Muslim and the tradition has been passed down to her by her mother and father. A tradition is which Portier believes shapes an individual into who they are in a “particular place and time and in a particular network of relations to people in family, community, nation, and church”. (19) Her time happens to be in her teenage years. The courageous choice to wear a Hijab in public shocks not only her parents, friends but teachers as well. In the book, she tells us about her first encounter wearing the Hijab with her mother at Chadstone mall where she sees other Muslim girls of the same faith greet her by saying, “Assalam-u-Alaikum, she says, greeting me with the universal Islamic greeting, peace be upon you” ( p. 28). She thinks that by wearing the Hijab, its represents a worldwide sisterhood amongst them that can only be shared by tradition. This shared language and culture Portier believes gives us the answers to human capabilities to overcome feelings of hostilities perhaps. Feeling brave by this past encounter she wears the Hijab at school where she gets mixed feelings toward it at first by her friends and also by her principal who first questions if she should be allowed to wear it in school. Her parents do end up convincing the principal in allowing her

Get Access