“Hchouma”: How Shame Became a Tool of Control Over Moroccan Women
By Nojoud El Fatouaki, 14, Morocco
When I was nine, I wore a tabliya to school. I didn’t question it. It was simply part of my uniform, something I put on every morning without thinking twice.
It wasn’t until I was thirteen, when I moved to a new school, that I began to question it.
There, the tabliya was something only girls were expected to wear. And suddenly, something
I had worn for years without a second thought became a symbol of a rule I could no longer understand.
So I stopped wearing it.
And every morning, I found myself standing outside the classroom, arguing with the principal about why I wasn’t allowed to enter.
“It’s the rules,” he would tell me.
“But where in the rules does it say that you have the right to prevent me from going to class?” I would ask. “There are other consequences you can give me. Why should I lose my right to study?”
I kept asking questions. I kept arguing. I kept trying to make someone understand what seemed so obvious to me: if the tabliya was a uniform requirement, why was it a requirement for girls and not boys?
But what hurt me most wasn’t just the principal’s refusal to listen.
It was looking around and realizing that he wasn’t alone.
There was a directress. Another directress. A supervisor.
Women.
I repeat: women.
Women standing there, watching me as tears rolled down my face, without seeming to understand why this mattered to me, women who knew what it meant to grow up as girls in this society, yet who didn’t appear to see a problem with what was happening.
I couldn’t understand it. How could they not see what I was seeing? How could they watch a girl being denied access to her classroom over a rule that didn’t apply equally to boys and not question it?
And when I tried to raise the same question with the boys, I was met with insults and strange looks. Why was I making such a big deal out of it? Why couldn’t I just follow the rules?
But that was exactly the point. Why was I expected to follow a rule that boys weren’t expected to follow? Why was questioning it treated as a problem in itself?
I was thirteen. I didn’t have all the terminology or the political vocabulary to explain what I was experiencing. I only knew that something was wrong, and that being the only person willing to say so made me feel even more alone.
That was when I decided I was a feminist.
Not because I hated boys. Not because I wanted special treatment. Not because I wanted to rebel for the sake of rebelling.
But because I had started to understand that a rule doesn’t become fair simply because an authority figure calls it a rule. And a tradition doesn’t become unquestionable simply because everyone around you has accepted it.
Sometimes, the first step toward recognizing injustice is being the only person in the room willing to ask why.
Eventually, the director gave me an ultimatum: If I refused to wear the tabliya again, I would be expelled.
And so, I gave up.
I started wearing it again, not because I had changed my mind, not because anyone had answered my questions or convinced me that the rule was fair. I wore it because I was thirteen, and the possibility of losing my education was a price I could not afford to pay.
I had spent so much time asking why, hoping that if I explained myself clearly enough, someone would finally understand. But in the end, I was the one who had to give in.
And perhaps that is what unsettled me most. I had questioned a rule, and the response had not been to answer my questions, but to threaten my place in the classroom.
I obeyed, but I wasn’t convinced.
I wore the tabliya, but I hadn’t stopped questioning what it represented to me. I was thirteen, and I had learned something I would carry with me long after I left that school: Sometimes, people don’t follow rules because they believe in them. Sometimes, they follow them because the consequences of refusing are too great.
And I began to wonder how many girls had learned the same lesson, in different ways, in different classrooms, in different homes.
How many had learned that it was easier to stay quiet than to question something unfair? How many had mistaken having no choice for making one?
I didn’t get to change that rule. But I never stopped questioning it.
My experience with the tabliya was only one example of something I would begin to notice everywhere: The way rules imposed on girls are often treated as normal, and the way questioning them can become a problem in itself.
But not every rule comes with a principal standing at the classroom door. Some are enforced through comments, judgmental looks, warnings, and a single word that can make a girl question whether she’s done something wrong.
Hchouma.
In Morocco, the word can mean shameful, embarrassing, or socially unacceptable, depending on the context. There’s nothing inherently wrong with teaching children to be considerate of others. But what happens when shame stops being about how we treat people and starts being about how girls are allowed to exist?
What happens when a girl is made to feel that her body is a problem, that her clothes are a statement everyone has the right to judge, that speaking too confidently makes her disrespectful, or that asking a question makes her difficult?
In Morocco, and in other Arab societies, women can grow up with the impression that their lives follow a predetermined path: finish school, get married, have children — lots of them — and repeat, as if a woman who chooses a different life has somehow failed, as if marriage and motherhood are the only things that can give her life meaning.
There are expectations about how a woman should look, dress, and behave, too. She should dress modestly, cook, clean, and know when to stay quiet. A woman who doesn’t fit these expectations might be called mamrebyach, or told that what she’s doing is hchouma. Even talking openly about menstruation, or eating in front of male relatives during Ramadan while on her period, can become a reason for judgment. “Awili, what will people think?”
“Makat7chmich?”
These expectations aren’t just about individual household rules. Data from UN Women show that women in Morocco spend a much larger share of their time on unpaid care and domestic work than men do. It raises an important question: Why is so much of this responsibility still placed on women?
And that’s what makes shame so powerful: Eventually, people don’t even need to enforce the rules themselves. Women can grow up believing these expectations are simply how things should be. They may judge other women for breaking the same rules that restrict them, without questioning why those rules exist in the first place.
This goes beyond clothing or marriage. In some households, hitting children is justified as education. Girls and women can also face violence for failing to cook, clean, complete a task, or obey. Meanwhile, girls are told not to go out because men might catcall them. But why is the responsibility placed on girls to limit their freedom, rather than on boys to learn that harassment is unacceptable?
These aren’t isolated questions about what someone should wear, eat, or do with their life. They’re questions about who gets to make the rules, who pays the price for breaking them, and why we’ve learned to treat these inequalities as normal.
I couldn’t change the rule at thirteen. I couldn’t make the people around me understand why it was unfair. But I could refuse to stop questioning it.
And maybe that’s where change begins: not by teaching girls to be less ashamed of themselves, but by asking why they were taught to feel ashamed in the first place.
Because something doesn’t become right simply because it’s been normalized. And a girl shouldn’t have to choose between her freedom and her place in the classroom.
This article was inspired by my own experiences growing up in Morocco and noticing the expectations placed on girls from a young age. When I was thirteen, I questioned a school rule that applied to girls but not boys, and I was threatened with expulsion for refusing to follow it. That experience made me question why certain rules are accepted without question, and why speaking up against them can make you the problem.
While writing this article, one of my biggest struggles was trying to put these experiences and observations into words without making the subject seem simpler than it really is. Hchouma is a word I grew up hearing, but I wanted to explore how shame can become more than a social expectation: it can become a way of controlling what women wear, say, and do with their lives.
Through this piece, I hope to encourage readers to question the expectations we have come to consider normal and to think about how they affect girls and women. I also hope to remind people that just because something has been normalized for generations doesn’t automatically make it fair. Sometimes, change begins with one person asking why.
Instagram: @nojoud.efii
Photo by Héctor Martínez
