The BabyFist shop in downtown Ramallah has a sleek, minimal design with just a handful of handmade, seasonal apparel in the window display, unlike many of the shop windows to be found in this West Bank city. Even more out of the ordinary is the brand’s feminist message both on its clothes and in its social projects.

The shop’s founder and owner, Yasmeen Mjalli, 23, moved back to Ramallah in 2017 after growing up in North Carolina. As she was trying to settle in her new city, the sexual harassment she faced on the streets simply astonished her. “I was experiencing a lot of harassment on the streets because I was living in the baladia [city center],” she told Al-Monitor. “It’s really debilitating, right? This was something that people have just been normalizing — no one reacted.”

Her campaign — which later became the slogan of her clothes brand — was born from the catcalls she heard. She created the slogan “not your habibti” — translated as “Not your sweetheart.” Habibti, meaning “sweetheart” in Arabic, is a common phrase that men shout out to women on the streets — similar to “hey baby” in English. The phrase can now be reclaimed by women as it adorns the front of their T-shirts or back of their denim jackets that Mjalli created.

More than just making cute clothes with punchy slogans, Mjalli wanted to start a conversation on women's issues and feminism. So she took a typewriter and went on the streets of Ramallah to ask women to tell their stories of abuse. After a while, not just women but anyone who doesn’t necessarily conform to traditional gender norms was eager to tell stories of mistreatment, harassment, discrimination or abuse.