Born in a refugee camp in Kenya, she moved to the United States with her family at age 7 and was the first Muslim homecoming queen at her high school in Minnesota, the first Somali student senator at her college and the first hijab-wearing woman in the Miss USA Minnesota pageant.
In her Instagram posts, Aden detailed where she felt the religious covering hijab had been respected - for example in a campaign for Rihanna's Fenty beauty line - and where it had gone astray, showing an instance when her head had been wrapped in jeans.
"I was just so desperate back then for any 'representation,' that I lost touch with who I was," she wrote on one post, and on another, wearing a crystal-encrusted headscarf, she said "I should have walked off the set because clearly the stylist didn't have a hijab wearing woman in mind."
She said her acceptance of situations that showed a lack of respect for her beliefs was due to a mixture of rebellion and naivete. "What I blame the industry for is the lack of MUSLIM stylists," she wrote.
