100 Women 2016: Bake Off's Nadiya Hussain -
Muslim, Bangladeshi, British and proud
- 7 December 2016
Celebrity baker and Great British Bake-Off
Champion Nadiya Hussain has talked to Shaimaa Khalil for the BBC's 100 Women
season about coping with fame, her identity as a British Muslim and writing
about defiant women. 
Mrs Hussain's success on the
BBC baking competition was watched by a record audience of over 13 million
people last November. Since then, she has become the star of her own television
series, written numerous books and baked a birthday cake for The Queen.
It's really interesting that your third book is fiction. Tell me a bit
about the process and why you wanted to write it.
It's one thing when you're
writing recipes, this is very different. There are no chocolate cakes to hide
behind. I ended up creating the story by starting with the characters first.
What I realised is that I really enjoy writing about strong women. I grew up in
a family of very strong women... it was really nice to write about strong,
defiant women who have a voice, but kind of almost don't have a voice. And
that's something I can relate to. It's about an immigrant family -
first-generation Bangladeshis - very similar to me, but it is in no way
autobiographical. Living in quite a close community you hear lots of different
stories, anecdotes, funny tales, and I just kind of took bits from things that
I've heard. When you write, everything's material!
Do you feel there is pressure on you now that you're famous to represent
Muslim British women?
When I went into the show I
was just me. I suppose my headscarf, the way I look, the way I choose to dress
is incidental. It's been a part of my life since I was 14, so I don't know
anything else. So when I walked into that [Great British Bake-Off] tent it was
all about just getting through the bakes. When I came out of the show and
during the transmission I realised that what I thought would be incidental was
actually highlighted and almost magnified. To this point I've only ever worked
really hard to be a role model to my children, never ever thinking about the
wider world and it's an absolute honour to be able to be in this position and
to say: "Yes I am Muslim, I'm Bangladeshi and I'm British and I'm proud of
all those things."
It must be really pressuring though?
It's not, because I also
maintain that I'm not perfect. As a mum nobody gave me a manual - I kind of
worked it out at 21. I was like: "Oh so the aim is to keep him
alive!"
Nadiya was asked to bake a cake for the Queen's 90th birthday
Many Muslim women have to endure anti-Islamic slurs in the street - has
that ever happened to you?
From the moment I've worn my
headscarf that almost comes with the territory. I don't feed negativity with
negativity. I receive it with a smile and I say: "You know what? I don't
need to balance the scales." For me that's really important because my
foremost and most important job is my children. I live in a lovely country. I
don't want my kids to grow up with a chip on their shoulder. Those negative
people and those negative comments are the minority and I don't let that
dictate how I live my life.
Has any abuse been better or worse since you've won Bake-Off?
I think when you're in the
public eye and then you're on on social media, the world is a much smaller
place. It's really how I deal with it that matters to me. If there's somebody
negative in my life I choose not to have their mobile number in my phone -
we're not friends. It's the same with social media. If somebody's mean to me, I
just block them. Do I regret [entering Bake-off]? No. Not for a second. There
are times when I am tired, but I'm human. This last year I've grown so much as
a person and grown in ways I never would have.
What is 100 women?
BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. We create documentaries, features and interviews about their lives, giving more space for stories that put women at the centre.
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