THIS summer, I’ve traded in my usual hijab for a turban. The biggest consequence of this is not physical. It’s a matter of perception: I am no longer immediately identified as Muslim. I could just be protecting my hair from the outside elements or protecting the outside elements from my uncooperative hair. I could just be from some obscure African country — and coincidentally, I am. Or I could just be a little too obsessed with Zadie Smith.

The transformation is a success. Friends who have not seen me in a while do a double take, ask if I’ve lost weight. No one wonders if I am “hot in that” — in the summertime, this tops my hijabi F.A.Q. list — but someone does ask me if I am Caribbean. I bask in compliments and entertain runway dreams. Life is newly marvelous.

It is a shame that I did not discover this hack earlier. In high school, I was not a cool kid. I had always assumed that my modest appearance — an aesthetic disruption in a sea of girls sporting Lululemon leggings and crop tops — was at least partly to blame. When a hijabi named Zarifeh Shalabi was elected prom queen in Fontana, Calif., last year, I was just as surprised as the rest of the world.

At the time, my own prom adventures were not going as well as Ms. Shalabi’s. While her friends were rallying to get her elected against the odds, mine were proving exceedingly useless in the struggle to somehow coerce my high school crush into asking me to prom in the few moments we shared in between second period United States history and third period A.P. macroeconomics.