Walking around Jakarta, it's easy to start thinking of women as divided into two camps: the headscarfed and the un-headscarfed. But the underlying reality is more complicated, Trish Anderton finds.

The jilbab (headscarf) began to surge in popularity and acceptance in the late 1990s, so most of the women now wearing it have chosen to do so as adults. It's not the kind of decision one makes lightly; many women have to explain or defend the choice to at least one person in their life.

Some wear it for a while and stop. Some feel they are forced to wear it; others feel they are not allowed to. Marriages, divorces, deaths and births all play a role, as do a woman's most private thoughts and feelings. There's a story under every headscarf.

Hopefully I'll wear a headscarf again

Rosianti still remembers her favorite headscarf.

"It was white," she says. "I like white. I didn't have colored headscarves, like a red one, because I like classic, neutral colors."

"The fabric was cotton," she adds. "It was cool, not hot."

Sitting in her small living room in East Jakarta's Cipinang Muara kampong, 28-year-old Rosianti is dressed neatly, with her hair pulled into a bun. Her five-year-old son plays outside; she and her husband have another baby on the way.

The Padang native first put on a headscarf while she was studying secretarial and office skills at a secretarial academy.

"The friends I was hanging out with were very spiritual," she explains. "My best friend started wearing a headscarf. I saw she had a good family, she was wearing the headscarf, and I'm a Muslim, too, so I wanted to change."

It was not a casual choice. Money was tight; she had to save up for three months to buy enough headscarves. When she finally put one on and went out to catch the bus, she felt "so-o-o happy," she says, drawing out the words with relish.

Then she felt a different, more earthly sensation: warmth.

"It was really hot at first," she says, smiling. "But after that, you gradually get used to it. Then if you take it off, you feel naked."

She wore them for a year, and then stopped. "Sometimes our spirituality rises, and sometimes it falls. Sometimes we make mistakes."

She'd like to go back to wearing it again. What's stopping her is not a spiritual reason, but a thoroughly worldly one: her company does not hire women who wear the headscarf.

"I'm surprised they don't allow it," she says. "These days a lot of foreign firms already allow you to wear it. With foreigners it's already OK."

Rosianti misses the tidy, polite appearance she feels the headscarf creates, and the respect it commands.

"We're neat, from head to toe. In other words, you don't have any thigh showing. So the boss wouldn't dare try anything, you talk politely and people don't want to hassle you."

She could still wear one around her neighborhood, and on the way to work, but "it's better to just stop altogether" than to wear it only some of the time, she said.

"People will think you're not a good woman, you know? Like it's a disguise. Hopefully, some day I'll wear a headscarf again."

Rosianti feels a little guilty for not wearing it. But she also believes one's faith doesn't depend on wearing a headscarf.

"People think if you wear a headscarf, your religion is strong. But they can't see your heart. Only God can."

I am part of the universe, so why should I be exclusive?

Ratih Dewi didn't go looking for the jilbab. It came to her ... in a dream.

"I would be leaving the house," she says on the phone from Aceh, recalling her recurring dream. "I would close the door and then have this feeling I should be wearing something - like, 'where is my scarf?'

"I wasn't wearing a headscarf then, but the dream was telling me to wear it, so I decided maybe it was time."

It was 1999. Ratih was 31 and working for a joint venture company. She wasn't the most obvious candidate for the headscarf. Her family is Muslim, but much of her early education was in Catholic schools. As a young person, she was leading a bit of a wild life.

"We would always go to the clubs and to the disco and dance just a little bit on top of the table," she laughs.

But then she began feeling what the poet Philip Larkin called "a hunger in oneself to be more serious."

"I was just thinking, why are we human, why do we live on this earth?" she says. "I was really studying Islam. I wanted to have my own understanding of what Islam is."

Ratih read a lot of books by the 11-century Muslim scholar al-Ghazali. That's when she began having her jilbab dream. She bought a few headscarves - in different colors, but all in the same loose, comfortable style -- and began wearing them.

When she put a scarf on for the first time, she says, she felt satisfied. The physical action answered the need she felt in her dream. The jilbab answered an external need, too. It signaled her desire for a different kind of life.

"Maybe at that time I felt enough was enough. I mean always going out at night, until early morning." With the jilbab, she says, "I didn't have to say no when [my friends] asked me to go somewhere." Pretty soon, they stopped asking. Within six months, her club-hopping lifestyle had faded away.

Ratih's family was surprised. "They said, 'what happened?' And then, 'are you sure you want to wear the scarf?' But when I said yes, I'm sure, they said, OK, do whatever you want to do!"

Her friends found it a bit more difficult. "They said are you really ready to wear that or are you sure you're good enough to wear it, or something like that. I think it was uncomfortable for them when I just changed like that." Some called her a chameleon, changing her colors to fit her surroundings.

The message of the jilbab may have been useful at first. But after a few months, she began to feel it was saying too much. She was hanging out with friends from different backgrounds, and they often discussed spirituality.

"They were Chinese who were Buddhists and Chinese who were Christians and there were Muslims and Hindus," she says. "I loved to be part of that.

"I was thinking I'm part of the universe so why should I be exclusive? I should be inclusive."

She worries that an emphasis on clothing focuses people too much on the superficial aspects of faith, rather than on a deep, inner spirituality. "It's only the surface," she says.

"The mass consciousness is that when people wear the jilbab, they are good people. But it's not like that, because it depends. Sometimes even a Muslim leader is mean to their housemaid.

"People should follow their heart, and not the mass consciousness in the air," she concludes.

Ratih says it took a while to get used to not wearing the headscarf. She felt guilty and confused, and wondered if she was a bad person.

"But also I confronted myself. This is my life and I can change whatever I like, and I know I want to have my own opinions. ... to live life according to my own opinions.

"I just know that I respect everybody."

'We cannot say which hit breaks the stone'

Okky Asokawati says she's not sure exactly what caused her to start wearing a headscarf six months ago.

"If we hit a stone a hundred times, we cannot say which hit breaks the stone, because it's cumulative," the country's former top model said in her living room in Kemang in early November.

"People say it's because of my husband, who passed away three months ago. I think that's one of the hits."

Okky had been married just three years when her second husband died (she had divorced her first husband, photographer Firman Ichsan). While his death was tragic and difficult, she says, it also brought her closer to God. Her two pilgrimages to Mecca focused her spirituality as well. Okky grew up Muslim, but she did not study the faith very much when she was young.

Now she feels almost like a convert, because it's only in recent years that she's begun to learn about Islam.

The decision to wear a headscarf, she says, was entirely her own; she didn't consult her husband or her spiritual adviser.

The stone "broke," as it were, at the most mundane moment.

"I wanted to go to Pasar Raya (department store), and suddenly I felt, ah, I want to wear a headscarf. I used it and I went to Pasar Raya. And that's all. After that, every day I used a headscarf."

One thing is clear: the change hasn't forced Okky to leave the world of fashion. She favors the trendy kerudung, or "creative jilbab", the tightly-wrapped scarf that frames the face. Today she's wearing a brown one that coordinates with her outfit. It has a white underscarf and an intricate flower on the side.

"Lots of my headscarves are in light colors because I am not young anymore, my complexion is not fresh anymore, so to make my appearance look fresh, we have to be strategic by using light colors. For example I use a dark color but I accent with white."

Okky brings design ideas to her tailor. . For special occasions, her stylist handles the finishing touches.

"For everyday wear, I do it myself," she adds, "because there are lots of books about kerudung now, so I can learn."

The change hasn't affected her social life, she says.

"I don't limit my socializing. My friends are still my friends. When they put on a fashion show I come, when they get married I'm there, when I'm invited I go, so there are no limits."

But, "If I meet with close friends, male close friends like designers, before when I met them I would give my cheek. Nowadays I make a nice gesture but I don't give my cheek, but if they want to kiss me it's OK," she says, noting that the Koran instructs against hurting people's feelings.

Okky, who has a degree in psychology, believes there are three major reasons more women have started wearing the headscarf. One is to command more respectful behavior from men and discourage sexual harassment. The second is simply because it's fashionable. The third is as a visual indicator of one's spirituality and a rejection of worldly temptations.

"Lots of students now are wearing the jilbab. Among other things it's maybe a way for them to show their identities as students, that they are pulled-together, that they won't be taken advantage of by the kinds of lifestyles that are out there now."

What if Muslim leaders began advocating the use of head-to-toe coverings like the abaya of the Gulf States or the burqa of Afghanistan?