yasmin & basra

Yasmin Dini’s mother, Basra, grew up in a traditional Somali household on the East Coast of Africa in a time, location, and place very different from today. She grew up in generation where being an ‘air hostess’ defined beauty as you would only get hired if you were exceptionally beautiful. Growing up in that day and age, being more heavy-set or voluptuous was considered to be a more attractive body type than the one Basra had, which was on the skinnier side of things. So, in her teenage years, Basra always aspired to reach the beauty standard of a typical air hostess because that’s what she believed to be was the ideal form of beauty.

However, Basra’s mother – Yasmin’s grandmother – never let her feel like she was less than and always reminded her that she was beautiful in whatever shape or form she came in. But whenever she went to school, she would hear otherwise from her classmates and other girls her age – making her feel like she was always competing between the love she got from her mother vs. what others told her.

Fast forward some 30 years, Basra Dini raised 3 daughters of her own, one of them being Yasmin Dini. Basra always tried to instil a mix of both African and Western beauty standards within her daughters as they grew up – so they had a collection of fashion and beauty to choose from and what they wanted to identify with. Basra also encouraged her daughters to feel empowered in their hijab, an important symbol of their faith. As the generations of women before her, Yasmin’s mother worked hard to ensure that she knew that she was beautiful from the inside out – so that she would never have to feel that she needed to live up to any unrealistic beauty standards in her generation, whether that was an Air Hostess or a Kardashian.