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

An engineer strode onstage at an occasion in Tehran, carrying tight pants and a trendy 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 underneath 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 dying final 12 months of Mahsa Amini, 22, whereas within the custody of the nation’s morality police, girls and women 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 immediately 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 colleges and on college campuses, in accordance with interviews with girls 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 girls interviewed for this text, requested that her surname not be used for worry of retribution.

Kimia mentioned that many feminine college students at her faculty didn’t cowl their hair even in lecture 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 women over 9 cowl their hair, and that they disguise the curves of their our bodies underneath 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 ladies masking their hair.

However movies of parks, cafes, eating places and malls — locations in style with youthful girls — present extra of them uncovered. Many distinguished girls, 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 various, 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 girls, lots of whom have been fined, crushed or arrested by the morality police after they have been mentioned to be in violation.

However anger over the regulation boiled over in September, when the younger lady, Ms. 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, dying sentences and the executions of 4 younger protesters.

However many acts of civil disobedience proceed every day, together with chanting “dying 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 that they had disbanded the morality police, and so they haven’t been seen on the streets since. For the second, the authorities are solely often imposing the hijab guidelines, in accordance with girls and activists in Iran.

The authorities just lately shut down two pharmacies, one in Tehran and one other within the northern metropolis of Amol, after feminine workers have been reported for not carrying a hijab. And within the spiritual metropolis of Qum, they reprimanded the supervisor of a financial institution for catering to purchasers with out hijabs. The judiciary has additionally opened a case towards Ms. Kazempour, the engineer, in accordance with 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 various enforcement strategies are being thought-about, like warning girls by textual content message, denying them civic companies or blocking their financial institution accounts.

“Head scarves can be again on girls’s heads,” the lawmaker, Hossein Jalali, was reported as saying in December on Iranian media.

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

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

The ladies who’ve stopped masking 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 just lately 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 plenty 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 obtained 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 non secular girls who put on a hijab by selection have joined the marketing campaign to repeal the regulation. A petition with 1000’s 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, just lately traveled along with her daughter to the vacation island of Kish within the Persian Gulf. They have been stunned to seek out most ladies carrying 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 by 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 carry down my fist till freedom, even when we’ve 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 mates, 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 must you. It’s no person’s enterprise.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.