ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three ‘cover girls’ from Afghanistan and Pakistan, whose images have been used politically and polemically within the context of the ‘War on Terror’. The chapter begins by analysing the portraiture of Sharbat Gula (most famously known as the Afghan Girl), who was initially photographed by Steve McCurry in 1985, and photographed again as an adult in 2002, both times for National Geographic. This is followed by a discussion of the photograph of Aisha Mohammadzai, which featured on the cover of TIME magazine in August 2010 alongside the heading ‘What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan’. The third ‘cover girl’ under consideration is Malala Yousafzai, from Swat Valley in Pakistan, who was shot by the Taliban on 9 October 2012 when she was 15 years old. Drawing on the model of remediated witnessing, the chapter argues that Yousafzai’s bestselling memoir, as an act of writing back—and of remediation—serves to reframe the events of the shooting in light of her political convictions, challenging homogeneous readings of her identity. This chapter argues that the remediation, refraction, and reframing of these three highly iconic Muslim women prompts a potential disruption to the construction of their subject(ed) identities.
