Clandestine fashion amidst war and migration: Murat, trans Afghan women and politics of (un)belonging

Abstract

Discourses around Afghan women’s fashion and beauty during the so-called War on Terror have been used to justify interventions and war. From the Beauty Academy of Kabul to Vogue’s Burqa series, Afghan women have lurked within the possibilities and impossibilities of the traditionally oppressed and modernly liberated. Trans Afghan women have remained invisible. Building on the feminist critique of the discourse of beauty in Afghanistan, this article brings into conversation the everyday performances of fashion and beauty in the lives of murat, trans Afghan women. Through a de/colonial ethnography of three murat/trans Afghan women in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Dublin, Ireland, I argue that clandestine fashion for some murat/trans Afghan women becomes means of belonging and sites of negotiations with home and exile. Some use fashion to escape the everyday violence of war and refugeeism, while others use it to disrupt the heterosexist gaze on the streets of metropolitan cities such as Kabul and Dublin and give visibility to trans women and their embodiment of fashion as political acts of resistance. ‘Clandestine fashion’ and beauty embodiment and performances of these trans Afghan women shed light on everyday security, friendship/kinship, joy and the complexities of trans refugee life during times of war and exile.