In the winter of 2017, a young woman named Vida Movahed hung her white headscarf from a utility box on Revolution Street, a major thoroughfare in the heart of Tehran. As a form of protest, it was remarkably peaceful, like a white flag of surrender. Movahed nonetheless challenged the system’s clothing regulations by not wearing a hijab. She remained for an hour before being detained for breaking the law. Instagram was flooded with photos of her brave, silent gesture. A month later, on the same street, a graduate student called Narges Hosseini committed the same act of defiance. #TheGirlsofRevolutionStreet became the movement’s hashtag, a reference to the street where the protests began.
These young women are currently on the streets. The movement they are leading is educated, liberal, secular, brought up with higher aspirations, and anxious for normalcy: education and international travel, respectable jobs, rule of law, access to the Apple Store, a meaningful participation in politics, and the right to say and wear whatever they choose. They differ greatly from those who came before them.
Sometimes they feel more like global Generation Z than Iranians, as they are vegetarians, de-Islamize their names, and do not wish to have children. I’ve often wondered what made them so defiant, as their ferocity was visible even before Mahsa (Jina) Amini, 22, died in their hands on September after being caught at a metro station by the morality police who enforce the dress code.
People all over the world wondered what made them so rebellious, because their forceful nature was clear long before Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested at a metro station by the morality police who enforce the dress code and died while in their custody on September 16. Her death set off the longest uprising in the Islamic Republic’s 43-year history. Iranian officials say that the average age of protesters who are arrested is only 15. I can only come to the conclusion that when a generation’s hopes for freedom seem tantalizingly close, the remaining restrictions seem more humiliating and the last stretch of resistance seems less scary.
“”It’s getting harder to live with the paradox of being with hijab in hospital and without it outside. However, I’m hopeful of the future,” says Bita*, 30, a nurse from Tehran. Bita says that every one of her non-violent acts of protest—from boycotts to wearing black to mourn the dead—is “for the purpose of our slogan, ‘Woman, Life, Freedom.'”
Asma, age 25, took off her hijab in Tehran one day and got a flower and a note that said, “Thank you for making the city more beautiful with your free hair.” In support of these protests, many women in Iran give out flowers, chocolates, or nice notes.
In Iran, Behin Bolouri, who is 28 years old, and her sister Samin, who is 21, started singing professionally eight years ago. But Iran doesn’t let women sing. Since the protests started in September, their version of the Italian song “Bella ciao” has given Iranians who want to be free a glimmer of hope. Behin says, “We never stop dreaming and these are the dreams that come to our songs.”
As of this writing, about 400 Iranian protesters have been killed by security forces, though some human rights groups say the number is higher. Some of those who have been arrested are facing harsh punishments, according to the courts. Even though there are ways to block the internet, there are still reports of deaths and abuse in jail. Even though they have been going on for almost three months, protests on college campuses are still going strong. Students are still demanding the release of friends who have been arrested and defying rules that separate men and women in plazas and classes. During the national anthem at the World Cup, Iran’s team stood silently to show that they stood with the protesters.
Face-to-face confrontation with the mandatory hijab is such a smart way to reject Iran’s system. ‘ We were stuck in battles we couldn’t win over equal marriage and inheritance rights and other forms of legal discrimination that forced us to work in formal political spaces and through formal processes.’ Those might have been more important problems, but the government didn’t want to make those changes, and over time, activists were blocked so much that they gave up.
Behind her headscarf, a picture is taken of the shape of a 28-year-old Iranian woman. Women in Iran now take off their hijabs to show that they stand with the protesters.
“Woman, Life, Freedom” is written on a tattoo on a woman. Tattoos are not against the law in Iran, but the religious leaders don’t like them. Some tattoo artists these days work for free by putting slogans on the arms of protesters.
32-year-old Shima* is employed in the male-dominated disciplines of finance and economics.
It is revealing that schoolgirls have also joined these protests. A relative’s daughter told me that a chant was written on the blackboard daily in her eighth-grade classroom, and one student even had the bravery to inquire what dictator meant. They are not irrelevant to these words. They are all on Snapchat and can view the lives of their cousins around the world, well aware that they are the only students required to wear a hooded headscarf as if they were Benedictine nuns.
Their lives, especially online, couldn’t be more different from the images and messages of the Islamic Republic, which they grew up with. The regime is all about making people die. Portraits of soldiers who died in the Iran-Iraq War still hang on freeways, but in recent years, the system, which is what Iranians call their all-powerful government, has changed its propaganda to try to fit in with Instagram. But these historical grudges and traumatic memories don’t have much of an effect on Gen Z youth. Instead, they are focused on their own struggles, like living through years of crushing U.S. sanctions that have destroyed Iran’s economy and figuring out how to live under a rigid system that prefers isolation to economic and social openness.
One of the many reasons the rebellion has gone on for so long is that the government has been slow to respond. revolutionary elites have warned of a system that has completely lost its way, can no longer afford to support its traditional social base, has alienated everyone else, including the religious, and has put the security of its citizens ahead of their well-being. A regime that has been formed by decades of international isolation, as viewed by an outside expert. An Iranian analyst would perceive a system that desperately clings to power despite its narrowness and fragility. An Iranian adolescent views herself as the unlucky offspring of a growing pariah state, isolated economically, socially, and culturally from the rest of the world, and for what?
35-year-old painter Parva Karkhane concentrates on ladies and self-portraits. In Iranian exhibitions, she is frequently forced to cover her artwork with paper or fabric. “I started painting as a child but I’ve been doing it professionally for 15 years. I have always tried to express myself with my paintings. I wish for women’s demands to be met as soon as possible.”
Graffiti in the streets of Tehran that says “Woman, Life, Freedom.” And also other cities. The police often cover up protest signs with new paint, but protesters put them back up.
“I believe in hijab and I have worn it since I was nine. My daughter doesn’t believe in it but she has to wear hijab. I wish that my granddaughter can choose her lifestyle,” says Masoumeh*, 60. Her granddaughter is seven years old.
What are Iranians willing to go through to get the fundamental changes they want to see happen? The question will be decided by the people who live in Iran and will have to live with the results of their actions. For now, the effects of the Iranian girls’ revolt on the region and the world could not be any bigger. In Iraq and Afghanistan, which are close by and have a lot of violence against women, activists have put up posters of their Iranian sisters. Feminists all over the world, especially in Europe and Latin America, look at what happens in Iran as a sign of what will happen in their own struggles. No one saw how powerful it was for a girl to stand on a utility box and ask to be left alone. Neither did the people in charge in Iran, nor did the leaders of other countries who have made it a policy to be against women.
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