A sign reads "Respecting Hijab is mandatory in City Center," dictating Islamic dress for women at the new Isfahan City Center shopping mall on June 2, 2014 in Isfahan, Iran. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)[/caption]
Gender equality (or the lack of it) remains a central framework for Western perceptions of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the defining image in the West of the Iranian woman has been the enforced veil, periodically juxtaposed against vintage pictures from the 1960s showing young, “liberated” women confidently striding around Iranian university campuses in their miniskirts.
Today, there are two mutually exclusive representations of Iranian women which appear consistently in the Western media. The first is the chest-beating fanatic in the black chador, often shown cheering former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or berating less modestly dressed women. Then there is the urbane North Tehrani, replete with the trappings of modern life, hijab pinned precariously to the back of her hair.
While people who conform to both stereotypes can easily be found in Iran, neither is helpful in understanding gender issues there. We may be regularly told that female university graduates in Iran outnumber males, but we know very little about the real contribution women make to Iranian society, much less the struggles they face. When Western commentators speak about gender issues in Iran, their audience is rarely an Iranian one. For the most part, debates about Islam and gender often speak more to anxieties about community relations in the West and the need to reassert secular, “progressive” identities.
When it comes to feminist iconography, at least in the Middle East, few images can match that of the Iranian woman rejecting the hijab. It can be a powerful protest symbol against a system led by a Supreme Leader who believes gender equality was “one of the biggest mistakes of Western thought.” Equally, there is a troubling and self-serving selectivity about the way the Western media appropriates gender issues.
Some of the responses to the recent “Happy” videos fall into this category. A month ago a group of fashionable young Iranians uploaded a video of themselves dancing to Pharrell William’s song Happy, joining a global phenomenon which has seen young people in over 140 countries proclaim their happiness by dancing along to this summer’s big hit. When the jubilant Iranians—including three women appearing without headscarves—shared their video on social media, they soon attracted 165,000 views on YouTube. After this came to the attention of the easily outraged Iranian authorities, the youngsters were promptly arrested and forced to issue a groveling apology for their “vulgar” actions live on state television. The students were clearly terrified, and reports suggested their families had suffered severe intimidation. It was another reminder of the dangers facing those brave enough to push cultural boundaries in Iran.
The international outcry that followed was entirely justified, but some of the coverage reinforced a lazy and misguided narrative of Iran. While the Western media routinely ignores the everyday plight of ordinary Iranians struggling to buy medicine due to Western sanctions, the image of young Iranians persecuted for exuberantly dancing to an American pop song instantly went viral. Western coverage predictably focused on the fact that the Iranian women were not wearing headscarves. Many Westerners like to believe that the repeal of laws governing the headscarf is ground zero in the struggle for political and cultural freedom in Iran, that it is somehow the defining measure of social progress. It is not. The video’s meaning was reduced to the apparent desire of Iranians to embrace values easily recognizable as our own, with those values becoming the object and objective of protest. In other words, from that perspective, young Iranians are protesting simply because they are not allowed to be more like us.
The actual voices of Iranian women are lost through this appropriation, as is the political context behind the state’s reaction to the video. Little effort was made to connect it to the battle currently raging within the Iranian political system, one that sees hardline groups pushing back against the “cultural openness” promoted by President Hassan Rouhani’s government. Instead, the main conclusion we are invited to draw is that the Iranian regime objects to their citizens being happy.
Ironically, the outcry failed to spell out the most nefarious aspect of the state’s reaction to the video. Rhetorically, hardliners framed their revulsion to the video in Islamist terms, while also warning of the dangers of American cultural imperialism. The harsh reaction from Iran’s security apparatus is, however, much more tactical than ideological. The message they sent out is that users of social media who stray beyond the “red lines” defined by the state will be easily identified and dragged off to jail. The manner in which they were reportedly enticed into custody, using false messages about friends involved in car accidents, is particularly sinister. This time, the transgressors were released after their televised recantation. Next time, they might not be so lucky. But it’s not just Iran: the social media revolution has provoked extreme counter-measures from anxious governments across the Middle East.
To his credit, President Rouhani lent his support to the young video-makers, and there is speculation he had a hand in securing their release. This is not the first time Rouhani, who has gently agitated for greater cultural openness and gender equality, has clashed with the country’s judiciary and security services. Like the recent spike in executions in Iran, the latest clampdown is partly an ongoing attempt to dampen public expectations that Rouhani will substantially open up Iranian society. With the president’s controversial diplomatic strategy under the protection of the Supreme Leader, it is on cultural grounds that he is now most vulnerable to attack.
Unfortunately, much of the mainstream and “new” media substituted understanding of the political dynamics of Iran’s “culture wars” for pithy headlines and lazy stereotypes.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
