Tying in your work at the U.N., what do you think fashion’s role is in achieving sustainable development goals?

“The fashion industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Part of my work with the U.N. is on gender equality and health. So when we look at fashion, the people who suffer the most in this industry are women, particularly young women. That’s because in places like Bangladesh and China, it is mainly women doing the indoor labor for the fashion industry. These facilities are poorly ventilated, poorly lit, and are often rampant with sexual harassment. So when somebody goes to Forever 21 or Primark and buys a $15 shirt, it might be relatively inexpensive for the consumer, but someone had to pay with their life every single day for it to be that cheap. We have to start being a little bit more accountable in our daily choices. If we want to talk about gender equality and the right for women to have a safe environment, we have to be honest and talk about the production of our daily goods. Where was this purse produced? Where were these shoes produced? Who benefits from this? We have to recognize that somebody’s effort and work went into it for you to have it at that price.”

Let's extend your idea that women’s bodies are borders of nations to industries. For example, how does this gendered conception benefit fashion and further separate us in our ethnicity? How can women become more aware of this? How can it be changed with future generations?

"A lot of what we’ve spoken about today reflects our perception of women, be it in factories where women are exploited for cheap labor, or 'oppressed' Muslim women like myself [laughs], or as national and symbolic borders during conflicts and conquests. At the end of the day, these are all mere constructions by those who manipulate realities to gain and maintain power and influence — victors of war then, corporations, the media, and politicians now — eradicating women’s voices and complexities. Ultimately, we have to realize that perceptions are as tangible as the air we breathe and exposure helps alter this.

"We must stop seeing women as one dimensional. When we paint women with a broad brush, we impose onto them our own expectations and limitations for who they should be and what they can do. We change, we desire, we dream, we fight, we survive. The problem is, across different societies, we deny women the agency to embrace their complexities and contradictions. When we deprive someone of their dimensionality, we deprive them of their humanity.

"Those in power fear what they cannot control. Seeing women as complex, multi-dimensional beings adds variables to the images we have designed for them in an attempt to protect our own economic, cultural, political, and security interests. These images are manipulated under the guise of saving and empowering women, but there will be no true liberation until women are given the freedom to construct their own images of themselves. As women, we must quit deriding each other, comparing our own images of womanhood to those of our fellow sisters. We must know that although our choices may be different, our freedom to choose is tied to one another. And lastly, we must demand that our leaders see complexities as strengths instead of liabilities and understand that the only way to find peace in a complex world is to find peace in the complexities of the women living in it."