Okay, so I was chewing over this ask, and I was thinking – well, I was thinking much of what the blogger answering the post was saying. It has been literally a decade since I last researched Islamic women’s clothing, so please bear with me – but this is more about broad concepts, anyway.

It struck her, as they took a moment of rest in a burned-out Sibley’s, just how similar they all looked now. The threat of zombies – the constant threat, the pervasive, heart-pounding threat that meant you slept in shifts, you walked in tight groups and you never, ever let go of your weapon – the threat had meant they all turned to a certain sort of uniform. She wasn’t the only one with her face covered; the spitters could turn you if their bile got in your system, so they all wore cloth masks or veils over their faces, goggles or sunglasses over their eyes.

You didn’t want to leave any exposed skin, anything at all, which meant they were all covered head-to-toe, fingertip-to shoulder. The bilious ones, the really nasty ones, they could burn through your skin with a touch. Better to give them a couple layers of fabric to melt through first, better to have air between yourself and your clothes. What’s more, even the smart ones weren’t really smart. They’d get caught on a handful of cloth and never realize it wasn’t the person, even going as far as to bite-and-hold, the way they did with anything they could. So flappy layers of clothing were smart: they distracted the zombies and gave you a better chance of getting away or getting your shot.

None of them had washed their hair in – she’d lost count, but it had to be at least a week. There wasn’t a woman among them who wasn’t happier with their hair covered with a scarf, and most of them were wearing a helmet on top of that.

She was wearing almost the exact same thing Sally and Diane were: loose pants over closer-fitting pants, the stompiest combat boots they could find, three thin layers of shirt with a leather jacket over that, and driving gloves.

Even when they were resting, they never were safe, not truly. They never took off all their layers, because anything you shed, you might have to leave behind. So they sat, sipping water under veils and bandit-masks, and they all looked the same. They all looked alive.

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