Changing Beauty Politics

When Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, stepped off the train last September for her vacation in Tehran, she was wearing a loose black chiffon headscarf with five strands of hair showing. The hair is a five-strand statement that symbolizes courageous defiance of the regime, towards abolishing the headscarf altogether. She opted for a crimson lipgloss to cover her lips, a decision that seemed to foreshadow the bloodshed that would follow. Within minutes, he was taken aside by the Guidance Patrol, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s morality police, and beaten inches from his life. Charged with immoral dress and appearance, he died in custody not long after.

For months, the world has watched Amini’s death spark an outpouring of resistance on Iranian streets, with protesters communicating their politics through fashion, and, in many cases, being punished for it. Hundreds have died in the ongoing protests over the hijab law and dress code. But as the protests escalated last month, news emerged that government officials are weighing change the law.

Amini’s story is not unique. Not new either. For decades, fashion, style, and makeup choices have been dictated by strict state laws. The Islamic regime that came to power during the Iranian Revolution of 1979 exercised its authority by regulating clothing and public appearances, mandating austerity through clothing. Women must wear loose robes, preferably a black cloth that covers them from head to toe. No hair or ears visible; The hijab must be wrapped very tightly so that only the oval of the face is exposed. No eye-catching makeup or accessories allowed.

Protesters opposed this law in various ways; most recently, by cutting their hair in solidarity with fellow Iranians. (Conspicuous hairstyles for men or hair sticking out of headscarves for women can result in arrests and public lashings.) Every fashion choice can become a political battleground. Any display of clothing is a possible punishable offence.

Navigating Changing Beauty Politics

There is a long history of fashion intertwined with power and governance in Iran, dating back to the 1980s Qajar dynasty, who ruled Iran from 1789 to 1925. In the 19th century, paintings depicted male and female beauties closely resembled each other, with oval faces and moon-shaped eyes, kohl, thick eyebrows meeting in the center, and hair framing the face. Men appear without a beard, sometimes with a woman’s mustache too. Beauty is explored through the face, body, and the choice of outerwear, which in the 19th century included baggy harem pants and tunics for both men and women. Both sexes adhere to the same style, playing with gender on both sides whose politics are understood and explored through the ideal of beauty. The dynasty’s supporters chose a similar aesthetic and expressed their politics with their choice of style.

Each successive ruling party in Iran changed its fashions to suit their political viewpoints. And as each powerful ruler articulates their style, so does the subculture that speaks back to those in power through opposition goods.

For example, when the Pahlavi family re-emerged as kings in the 1960s and 1970s, they signaled their alignment with the West by supporting Western trends. Royals and their supporters wore haute couture, fresh from the runways of Paris and Milan, as they walked downtown streets across the country. Yves Saint Laurent was shocked to see his miniskirt designs shown in Iran before they were embraced in the US. Imported Western styles were royalist currency. Hair and makeup for men and women follow.

But the emerging dissident class saw this choice as evidence of a corrupt regime, undermining the moral fabric of a country by being Westernized, or too fascinated by the West. Long legs peeking out of tweed miniskirts or short caftans were considered unacceptable. Likewise, the eye-catching designs of blue and green eyeshadow accentuate their faces.

To express their resistance, Islamists encourage women to wear the veil, a black robe that covers their bodies. Men were told to cover their faces with their beards. And an Oxford shirt featuring a tie was criticized for being too Western. In contrast, the round collar and thick linen robes in muted colors are seen as symbols of Islamist resistance.

When the Islamists triumph in overthrowing the Shah, they run the platform of reclaiming Iran for Iran, and their platform will be executed by governing decency and dress. In the early 1980s, when Ayatollah Khomeini brought the Islamic regime to power, the headscarf become a mandatory dress code for women.

Decode Protest Clothing

Now, the Iranian people are once again using their style to speak their mind. To avenge the regime they disapproved of over the last four decades, fashion has become their means of communication with each other and with the brutal Islamists in power.

It started in the late 1980s with the hijab sliding backwards a millimeter at a time, earning the movement its nickname. Millimeter Revolution. The more hair strands are pulled forward, the more revolutionary the individual is. If the hair is colored, even bolder. And high fashion is reserved for in-house parties, raves, or underground concerts. Ladies go inside and immediately throw off their black shrouds, revealing glittering nightgowns or even haute couture.

Gradually, in the late 1990s, brightly colored headscarves and form-fitting coats replaced the black veils. Technically, the body was still covered, but Islamic outerwear was in vogue. The woman who plays with white or red is revolutionary. They play with form — the more structured or fitted the robes mentioned above, the stronger the resistor. Red lipstick and heavy eye makeup are a must.

In the summer of 2004, thousands of women organized en masse to appear on the streets of Tehran in open-toed shoes with red nail polish on their hands and feet. They reasoned that the supposed punishment of dipping hands in cockroaches and smearing feet with insects could not possibly be carried out on thousands of women at once. If they all showed up on the same day, there wouldn’t be enough cockroaches in all of Iran to catch more than a hundred women at once. They are right. The first few dozen met this fate. But the regime was outnumbered and, apparently, outnumbered. After July 2004, open-toed shoes were considered legal.

Looking Towards the Future

Fashion in Iran is not just about looking good. Because even taking off the headscarf could get a woman beaten to death, as Amini has shown us, it is a revolutionary act. The more conspicuous the appearance, the more allied women and men in the resistance communicated their irreverence to the regime. The by-product is gradually eroding the power of the regime through style and at the moment, it seems to be working. Take, for example, abolition of the morality police and potential changes to the mandatory hijab law. It may be a small step, but it’s something. People can’t help but think that a giant leap is necessary, and it has been long overdue.

Pardi Mahdavi, PhD is the Chancellor and Executive Vice President at the University of Montana. Her research interests include gender labour, human trafficking, migration, sexuality, human rights, transnational feminism, and public health in the context of changing global structures and politics. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been a fellow on the Council for Social Science Research, the Council on Learned Societies of America, Google Ideas, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholarships.