Constructing Cool: Modesty, Mipsterz’ Visual Culture and the Self-Fashioning of a Transnational Muslim Digital Diaspora

Abstract

This article examines the visual culture and fashion aesthetics of “Mipsterz,” or Muslim hipsters. Though the term originated amongst a group of friends based in New York in 2012, the neologism has arguably taken on a global life in fashion blogs and social media, with influencers from Turkey to Indonesia connecting transnationally. Many public debates celebrate these young, alternative voices and their projected self-images, while others critique the manner in which the ‘hipster’ label sanitizes, whitewashes, or secularizes Muslim piety. Indeed, these youths’ discourse highlight issues of performance, assimilation, normalization, and the dialectical construction of collective identity and individual subjectivity, yielding even greater interdisciplinary questions. Sitting at the theoretical nexus of cultural, fashion, and media studies, this article analyzes the ways in which such digital platforms not only give faith and fashion form, but it critiques the aesthetic, photographic, and performative mechanisms through which new sartorial politics are visualized.