Mehreen Baig, raised in Tottenham, North London a British Muslim woman finds that everyone seems to have an opinion about how she should live her life: the clothes she should wear, where she should go out, who she should marry.
Mehreen Baig is a teacher-turned-blogger and TV presenter, has turned the TV cameras on her own family in a documentary about what it means to be an independent young Muslim woman in Britain today.
She considers herself a practicing Muslim on the basis that she ‘prays and fasts’. But in the TV programme she raises questions not just about culture and religion but about patriarchy, too — her father’s control over her life, a control she sometimes considers comical, sometimes not.
The point of the
She favours figure-hugging dresses and short skirts, that would prompt even the most liberal-minded father to beg his daughter to put a cardigan on.
He uncles and aunties and community members don’t approve of her dressing. She says, “sometimes it feels like everyone has an opinion on how you should live your life. The big conflict is over clothes. People tell me I’m a bad Muslim.”
Her new BBC film, Islam, Women And Me, is fascinating, given the access she has secured within her community. She wants to know whether it’s possible to be a strong, independent woman and a good Muslim in modern Britain.