Meet Halima Aden. She is breaking stereotypes in unthinkable ways and is winning praises all over. In no way is Halima an ordinary teenager. The Somali-American teen is the first woman to participate in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant with a hijab.
Representing the state of Minnesota, Halima Aden is a 19-year-old St Cloud college student who has big dreams of competing at the 2017 Miss USA pageant.
On Saturday night, she dazzled on the stage with her hijaab during the Miss Minnesota USA pageant in a “burkini,” a bathing suit covering her from neck to ankle.
During the swimsuit segment of the competition on Saturday night, people from the crowd could not stop rooting for her
Even though she had never been party to any beauty pageant before, she decided to join the competition to break negative stereotypes and misconceptions about Muslim Americans, Somali-Americans and Muslim women.
Talking to TV station WCCO, Aden said, “I think part of the problem is they’re not interacting with people who are Somali. There is not one description of beauty, that in fact it has different faces, different stories, and different background, and it’s important to embrace all of those.”
Even though she had to face strong opposition for entering the competition from members of her own community, her spirit to fight it till the end deserves a lot of respect. She now becomes the first fully covered Muslim to compete in the state pageant, where she made it to the semifinal round of 15 but could not reach the final five.
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