Their Hair Long and Flowing or in Ponytails, Women in Iran Flaunt Their Locks

An engineer strode onstage at an occasion in Tehran, sporting pants and a classy shirt, and clutching a microphone in a single hand. Her lengthy brown hair, tied in a ponytail, swung freely behind her, uncovered, in open defiance of Iran’s strict hijab regulation.

“I’m Zeinab Kazempour,” she informed the conference of Iran’s skilled affiliation of engineers. She condemned the group for supporting the hijab guidelines, after which she marched offstage, eradicating a shawl from round her neck and tossing it to the ground beneath an enormous picture of Iran’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The packed auditorium erupted in cheers, claps and whistles. A video of Ms. Kazempour went viral on social media and native information websites, making her the newest champion for a lot of Iranians in a rising, open problem to the hijab regulation.

Girls have resisted the regulation, uncovering their hair an inch or a strand at a time, because it went into impact two years after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

However because the loss of life final 12 months of Mahsa Amini, 22, whereas within the custody of the nation’s morality police, ladies and ladies have been on the middle of a nationwide rebellion, demanding an finish not solely to hijab necessities however to the Islamic Republic itself.

Girls are all of a sudden flaunting their hair: left lengthy and flowing within the malls; tied in a bun on the streets; styled into bobs on public transportation; and pulled into ponytails at faculties and on college campuses, in response to interviews with ladies in Iran in addition to pictures and movies on-line. Whereas these acts of defiance are rarer in additional conservative areas, they’re more and more being seen in cities and cities.

“I’ve not worn a shawl for months — I don’t even carry it with me any extra,” mentioned Kimia, 23, a graduate scholar within the Kurdish metropolis of Sanandaj, in western Iran, who, like different ladies interviewed for this text, requested that her surname not be used for worry of retribution.

Kimia mentioned that many feminine college students at her school didn’t cowl their hair even in school rooms within the presence of male professors. “Whether or not the federal government likes to confess it or not,” she mentioned, “the period of the compelled hijab is over.”

Iran’s hijab regulation mandates that girls and ladies over 9 cowl their hair, and that they conceal the curves of their our bodies beneath lengthy, unfastened robes.

Many ladies nonetheless adhere to the rule in public, some by selection and others from worry. Movies of the normal bazaar in downtown Tehran, Iran’s capital, for instance, present most girls protecting their hair.

However movies of parks, cafes, eating places and malls — locations fashionable with youthful ladies — present extra of them uncovered. Many distinguished ladies, together with celebrities and athletes have eliminated their hijab in Iran and whereas representing the county overseas.

The state has lengthy promoted the hijab regulation as a logo of its success in establishing the Islamic Republic, however enforcement has assorted, relying on which political faction was in energy.

After the election in 2021 of Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-liner, as president, the principles have been more and more enforced, and with a strictness and brutality which have enraged Iranian ladies, a lot of whom had been fined, overwhelmed or arrested by the morality police after they had been mentioned to be in violation.

However anger over the regulation boiled over in September, when the younger lady, Mahsa Amini, 22, died within the custody of the morality police, and because the avenue protests that broke out throughout Iran rapidly morphed into broader requires an finish to being dominated by the nation’s clerics.

The protests have largely fizzled amid a violent crackdown by the authorities that has included mass arrests, loss of life sentences and the executions of 4 younger protesters.

However many acts of civil disobedience proceed each day, together with chanting “loss of life to the dictator” from rooftops, writing graffiti on partitions and tearing down and setting ablaze authorities banners.

And ladies have been going out in public with out their hijabs.

Officers mentioned in December they’d disbanded the morality police, and so they haven’t been seen on the streets since. For the second, the authorities are solely often implementing the hijab guidelines, in response to ladies and activists in Iran.

The authorities not too long ago shut down two pharmacies, one in Tehran and one other within the northern metropolis of Amol, after feminine workers had been reported for not sporting a hijab. And within the spiritual metropolis of Qum, they reprimanded the supervisor of a financial institution for catering to shoppers with out hijabs. The judiciary has additionally opened a case towards Ms. Kazempour, the engineer, in response to Iranian information experiences.

Officers say they’re reviewing the enforcement guidelines and plan to announce up to date measures. One conservative lawmaker has mentioned that different enforcement strategies are being thought of, like warning ladies by textual content message, denying them civic companies or blocking their financial institution accounts.

“Head scarves can be again on ladies’s heads,” the lawmaker, Hossein Jalali, was reported as saying on xxx by Iranian media.

However the defiance stays too widespread to include and too pervasive to reverse, ladies’s rights activists say.

“The core and coronary heart of this motion is absolutely the revolutionary act of those ladies turning their head scarves into the best and strongest weapon towards spiritual dictatorship and deep layers of misogyny and patriarchy,” mentioned Fatemeh Shams, a ladies’s rights activist and an assistant professor of Persian literature on the College of Pennsylvania.

The ladies who’ve stopped protecting their hair say that they’re decided to do as they need, however that they’re in favor of a “voluntary hijab.” In addition they say that they respect the rights of ladies who select put on scarves.

Leila, 51, who lives in Tehran, mentioned she and her teenage daughter had been dressing in public as they did in personal and after they traveled overseas — in attire, skirts, skinny denims and tight sweaters.

“I not too long ago needed to journey and struggled over whether or not I ought to put on the hijab on the airport as a result of there are a number of safety brokers, however determined towards it,” Leila mentioned in a phone interview. She was shocked to see the vast majority of the ladies on the airport that day had additionally ditched their hijabs. “All of us acquired by way of safety and passport management with our hair uncovered, and so they mentioned nothing. Our energy is in numbers.”

Hathis, 25, who opinions books and flicks on-line, posted {a photograph} of herself on Instagram in December sitting, hair uncovered, with a buddy at an outside cafe in Tehran. “Is that this what it feels prefer to really feel the cool fall breeze blow by way of your hair? And for 25 years I used to be denied this?”

Even many spiritual ladies who put on a hijab by selection have joined the marketing campaign to repeal the regulation. A petition with hundreds of names and images of ladies is circulating on Instagram and Twitter with the message, “I put on the hijab, however I’m towards the obligatory hijab.”

Maryam, 53, who observes the hijab regulation and lives in Tehran, not too long ago traveled along with her daughter to the vacation island of Kish within the Persian Gulf. They had been stunned to search out most girls sporting short-sleeved solar attire, sandals, capri pants and T-shirts. “Are we in Turkey or Iran?” requested her daughter, Narges, 26.

Shortly after the journey, Narges modified all of her social media profile photographs to 1 during which her lengthy brown hair was flowing over her shoulders and her fist was raised within the air. It introduced to her spiritual conservative household that she was taking off her hijab.

“I’ll by no means deliver down my fist till freedom, even when we have now to attend for a few years,” Narges wrote on her Instagram web page.

Maryam mentioned in an interview that she was flooded with messages and calls from kinfolk and associates, some supportive and a few crucial of her daughter.

“I informed them that occasions have modified,” she mentioned. “I respect my daughter’s selection and so do you have to. It’s no person’s enterprise.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.