"On a recent evening in the north of Iran’s capital of Tehran, a young woman with long hair fashioned into a high ponytail hopped onto a motorcycle behind a male companion."

Not far away, two other young women smoked cigarettes together on a sidewalk, one with her hair cascading down her back, the other wearing a loose T-shirt with elbow-length sleeves... . These urban scenes... illustrate how common it has recently become for Iranian women to flout the law, in place for over four decades, requiring they cover their hair and dress modestly in public."

From "Iranian women flout law on mandatory veiling as police curtail arrests/Defiance of hijab requirements has grown widespread across Iran. The government seems wary of cracking down, fearing unrest. But conservatives haven’t given up" (WaPo).

"The daughter of Ali Shamkhani, one of the Islamic Republic’s top enforcers, had a lavish wedding in a strapless dress."

"Meanwhile, women in Iran are beaten for showing their hair and young people can’t afford to marry."

Wrote Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian dissident, quoted in "Why a strapless wedding dress threatens Iran hardliner Ali Shamkhani/The daughter of Ayatollah Khamenei’s henchman wore a low-cut gown, prompting accusations of double standards among the elite in the Islamic regime" (London Times).

And yet: "The leaked video appears... to have been taken from a female-only event at the wedding, at which it is not uncommon for the father and groom to make a brief appearance. The regime has lashed out against the critics, and one newspaper affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard insisted that Shamkhani had behaved in a 'dignified and proper manner.'..."

As for the display of wealth, we're told the wedding cost $20,000.

The face covering I was about to bemoan... and then wanted to buy for myself.

I'm reading "Why Can’t Fashion See What It Does to Women? A season that included off-putting, sometimes cruel designs left us wondering about what it all means." That's by the NYT fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, and I'm giving you a free-access link so you can read the whole argument and see all the pictures. But I just want to concentrate on one thing.

At Courrèges, Nicolas Di Felice covered the faces of many models, in an otherwise elegant show inspired by the idea of the sun and rising temperatures, and shielded them from view. But even if the shades were meant as protection, the suggestion that a woman would need to hide was problematic....

Hide from the sun?! Is the sun sexist? I spend my life hiding from the sun — going for walks before sunrise or in the shadiest woods. I had a childhood full of sunburns, and the calendar of my old age is studded with dermatology appointments. I'm averse to the ritual of slathering sunblock goo all over. I prefer protective clothing when I can get it. And to me this Courrèges thing is fantastic.

It's not like the other things pictured at the link, e.g. "Arm-trapping 'cocoon' bodysuits at Alaïa, and mouth guards that stretched the face into rictus grins at Margiela."

Here's the Vogue article about the Courrèges show: 

"A jailed Iranian musician who encouraged women to remove their hijabs has been flogged 74 times...."

"Mehdi Yarrahi’s sentence has now been completed after he was imprisoned in 2023... He had been detained days after he released the song Roosarito, which means 'Your Headscarf' in Farsi...."

From "Iranian musician flogged 74 times for hijab protest song/Mehdi Yarrahi was jailed and lashed for encouraging women to remove their veils, as the Islamic regime cracks down on artists and intellectuals" (London Times).

You can listen to "Roosarito," here, on YouTube.

Here's a word-for-word translation. Excerpt:

The cloudy sky feels blue facing you

Untie your hair, so that they drown in its waves
Pull back the curtain so that the sky feels delighted
You are the sun, so it is impossible that the night falls

No wonder the government is terrified. 

"The school of the Republic was built around strong values, secularism is one of them. … When you enter a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the religion of pupils."

Said, French Education Minister Gabriel Attal, quoted in "French education minister announces ban on Islamic dress in schools/Students will no longer be allowed to wear the long, flowing dress known as the abaya in classrooms" (Politico).

Crosses, in case you're wondering, were already banned in schools, along with Jewish kippahs and Islamic headscarves. The abaya is less clearly religious, which is why it hadn't yet been banned. France puts the value of secularism ahead of individual expression.

"When I see the boys going to school and doing whatever they want, it really hurts me. I feel very bad."

"When I see my brother leaving for school, I feel broken, Earlier, my brother used to say I won't go to school without you. I hugged him and said you go, I'll join you later. People tell my parents you shouldn't worry, you have sons. I wish we had the same rights."

From "Afghanistan girls' education: 'When I see the boys going to school, it hurts'" (BBC).

"I have not worn a scarf for months — I don’t even carry it with me any more. Whether the government likes to admit it or not, the era of the forced hijab is over."

Said Kimia, 23, a graduate student in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, quoted in "Their Hair Long and Flowing or in Ponytails, Women in Iran Flaunt Their Locks/Defiant resistance to Iran’s mandatory hijab law has exploded across the country after nationwide protests that erupted last year" (NYT).

"Iran has abolished the morality police, according to an announcement by the attorney general carried on state media..."

"... following months of protests set off by the death of a young woman who was being held by the force for supposedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress laws. The decision, reported by state news outlets late Saturday night, appeared to be a major victory for feminists who have sought for years to dismantle the force and for the protest movement ignited by the death of the young woman, Mahsa Amini, 22, in September. The unrest has amounted to one of the biggest challenges in decades to Iran’s system of authoritarian clerical rule and the decision to scrap the morality police was the government’s first major concession to the protesters. The morality police 'was abolished by the same authorities who installed it,' the statement by Attorney General Mohammad Javad Montazeri said...."

The NYT reports.

Very good news!

"I was never told a woman’s hair should look beautiful. But, definitely, my hair was the most hated — in my culture, in my village..."

"... because in Iran, when I was growing up, oh, my God, curly hair was a disaster. People mocked me, called people with big hair a specific name — it meant 'big-head woman' — to shame us. When I was taking an English course [to prepare to attend university in the United Kingdom], a woman asked me, 'You straighten your hair?' And then she took off my headscarf and said, 'My God, look at your head. What are you doing? You just straighten this part because when it’s out of your scarf, you want to show you have straight hair?' I said, 'Yeah, because I don’t have time. I straighten my hair just a bit.' And she told me, 'Don’t.' I went back to my mirror and she said, 'Just look at yourself.' At first I didn’t know why. She said: 'Just look at yourself and don’t make your hair straight. Just look deeply at your hair. You are going to love it.'"

From "Here’s what it’s like to be persecuted for your hair" (WaPo).

"We tell each other on the scene where and when we would gather next time. But mostly you know where people would gather..."

"... and you do not need to arrange anything.... We will continue until they kill every single one of us.... They fired teargas directly at us the other night, my eyes were burning, I could not sleep all night, but still I went out the next night, with my tears and pain in my eyes." 

Said one woman named Nasheen, quoted in "'Women are in charge. They are leading': Iran protests continue despite crackdowns/People, determined to defy violence by security forces and online blackout, are resorting to old-fashioned methods to organise unrest" (The Guardian).

Also, from a woman named Negar: "Much of the time the men are just watching. Women organise and do everything. It’s completely different from previous times. Women are in charge. They are leading."

ADDED: Those 2 quotes seem to present a paradox — leaderless leading. Here's something in The New Yorker, "How Iran’s Hijab Protest Movement Became So Powerful," quoting the Iranian scholar Fatemeh Shams: 

"The protests started small, outside the Tehran hospital where a 22-year old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died last week after being detained by the 'morality police'..."

"... for an untold violation of the country’s harsh strictures on women’s dress. By Tuesday, the protests were racing across the country, in a burst of grief, anger and defiance. Many were led by women, who burned their headscarves, cut their hair and chanted, 'Death to the dictator.' The ferocity of the protests is fueled by outrage over many things at once: the allegations that Amini was beaten in custody before she collapsed and fell into a coma; the priorities of Iran’s government, led by ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi, who has strictly enforced dress codes and empowered the hated morality police at a time of widespread economic suffering... Many of the protests have been concentrated in the west, the poor, predominantly Kurdish region Amini’s family hails from. The Kurds — who speak their own language, have a distinct cultural identity and are mostly Sunni Muslims in a majority-Shiite country — have complained for decades of neglect by the central government.... In a video from Kerman, in southeastern Iran, a young woman sitting on a utility box, surrounded by a cheering crowd, is seen removing her headscarf and cutting off her own hair. 'An Iranian will die but will not accept oppression,' the crowd chants...."

WaPo reports.

"A European campaign celebrating the 'joy' and 'freedom' of wearing the hijab has been cancelled after fierce objections from France."

"President Macron’s government denounced the campaign by the Council of Europe as deeply unacceptable, left-wing politicians criticised it and right-wing candidates for the presidency denounced it as Islamist propaganda.... The council, which works for human rights and democracy... showed young women in the head-covering with the slogans 'Bring joy and accept hijabs,' 'Beauty is in diversity as freedom is in hijab' and 'My headscarf my choice.'... Marine Le Pen, the National Rally leader who has been increasing her criticism of Islam to rival the more virulent discourse of Zemmour, called the campaign 'outrageous and indecent when millions of women fight bravely gainst this enslavement.' Voices were raised in the left-wing opposition, which subscribes along with most of the French political world to the view that the headcovering for Muslim women represents a denial of equality. Laurence Rossignol, a Socialist senator who served as women’s rights minister under President Hollande, said: 'A reminder that women are free to wear the hijab is one thing. Saying that freedom is in the hijab is another.' Under France’s tradition of strict secularism, known as la laicité, the wearing of religious head covering is barred in state schools and by women employed in public services."

From "Europe-wide pro-hijab campaign dropped after French outcry/Council of Europe idea united left and right wing in opposition" (London Times).

If "freedom is in hijab," then France's forbidding of religious head covering in schools is a denial of freedom. Maybe that's correct, but France can't support the ad campaign while maintaining that policy. So it's really not surprising that both the right and left denounced the campaign.

By the way, I considered putting a "sic" after "gainst," but it's in the OED, spelled without an apostrophe. For example, Christopher Marlowe used it in 1602: "Why figthst gainst odds?"

IN THE COMMENTS: J Oliver writes:

Marlowe died in 1593, so he said nothing quotable in 1602, unless you believe his death was faked and he lived on in Italy writing Shakespeare plays. But All Well that Ends Well.

As I said in the comments, this uncovers a problem that is always there when I use the book publication date and language like "X wrote" or "X said." 

Poor Marlowe died when he was only 29:

"My mother says we should buy a burqa. My parents are afraid of the Taliban. My mother thinks that one of the ways she can protect her daughters is to make them wear the burqa...."

"But we have no burqa in our home, and I have no intention of getting one. I don’t want to hide behind a curtain-like cloth. If I wear the burqa, it means that I have accepted the Taliban’s government. I have given them the right to control me. Wearing a chador is the beginning of my sentence as a prisoner in my house. I’m afraid of losing the accomplishments I fought for so hard. ... I stay up late at night, sometimes till one or two in the morning, worrying about what will happen. I am afraid that because I am rejecting the burqa, soon I will have to stay at home and I will lose my independence and freedom. But if I accept the burqa, it will exercise power over me. I am not ready to let that happen.”

Said a 26-year-old woman named Habiba in Kabul, quoted in "Afghan women’s defiance and despair: ‘I never thought I’d have to wear a burqa. My identity will be lost’" (The Guardian).

With two-thirds of the population [of Kabul] under the age of 30, most women here have never lived under Taliban control....

Amul, a model and designer, has worked for years to establish a small business and now she sees it heading towards obliteration. “My whole life has been about trying to show the beauty, diversity and creativity of Afghan women,” she says. All her life, she says, she has fought the image of the Afghan woman as a faceless figure in a blue burqa. “I never thought I would wear one but now I don’t know. “It’s like my identity is about to be scrubbed out.”

"Boris Johnson’s comments comparing Muslim women in veils to letterboxes gave people the impression that the Conservative Party 'are insensitive to Muslim communities'..."

"... an independent report has concluded.... The review, set up in 2019 and led by psychiatrist Swaran Singh... said that 'anti-Muslim sentiment remains a problem' in the party but concluded that there was no evidence of systemic discrimination.... In a statement to the commission, Johnson apologised for any offence caused by his letterboxes remark and said: 'I do know that offence has been taken at things I’ve said, that people expect a person in my position to get things right, but in journalism you need to use language freely. Would I use some of the offending language from my past writings today? Now that I am prime minister, I would not.' Johnson made the letterboxes comment in a Daily Telegraph column where he criticised a law passed in Denmark to ban the niqab, a full face veil with a slit for the eyes, and the burka, a full covering with a mesh over the eyes. He wrote that the law should not tell 'a free-born adult woman what she may or may not wear in a public place,' but added that it is 'absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.'"

The London Times reports.

Presumably, Johnson was picturing the English-style "pillar box":

It was a rude remark. He could have been more careful. In the words of the great Englishman John Lennon: Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox/They tumble blindly....

"[W]hen 'Nothing Compares 2 U' made her a star, O’Connor said the song’s writer, Prince, terrorized her...."

"She writes that Prince summoned her to his macabre Hollywood mansion, chastised her for swearing in interviews, harangued his butler to serve her soup though she repeatedly refused it, and sweetly suggested a pillow fight, only to thump her with something hard he’d slipped into his pillowcase. When she escaped on foot in the middle of the night, she writes, he stalked her with his car, leapt out and chased her around the highway. Prince is the type of artist who is hailed as crazy-in-a-good-way, as in, 'You’ve got to be crazy to be a musician,' O’Connor said, 'but there’s a difference between being crazy and being a violent abuser of women.' Still, the fact that her best-known song was written by this person does not faze her at all. 'As far as I’m concerned,' she said, 'it’s my song.'... O’Connor converted to Islam several years ago and started going by the name Shuhada Sadaqat.... 'I haven’t been terribly successful at being a girlfriend or wife,' she said. 'I’m a bit of a handful, let’s face it.' But a few months ago, when she moved into her blissfully remote cottage, she found that several other single women lived alone nearby. Soon a couple of them had come by offering bread and scones, and she found herself with a crew of girlfriends for the first time since she was a teenager.... 'Down the mountain, as I call it, nobody can forget about Sinead O’Connor,' she said. But up in the village, nobody cares, 'which is beautiful for me,' she said. 'It’s lovely having friends.'

From "Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently/The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on 'Saturday Night Live' and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true?" by Amanda Hess (NYT).

Prince harangued his butler to serve her soup! He weaponized his pillow in their pillow fight! He stalked her in his car and chased her around the highway! And he — he and not she — got to be considered crazy in the good way. She was crazy in the bad way, it seemed, but she's owning her brand of "crazy." 

She said she considered herself a "punk" and when "Nothing Compares 2 U" became a big hit, things felt out of whack, and tearing up the photo of the Pope restored her idea of order to her life.

She wears a hijab now (over a head that's still shaved). And if you read the comments section over there, you'll see, she comes in and answers people:  

"Though they circumcised their daughter, her parents were relatively liberal by the standards of the time and believed that all their children should be educated regardless of gender."

"When El Saadawi was ten they tried to marry her off in accordance with local custom, but her mother supported her when she resisted. El Saadawi allegedly deterred other suitors by smearing aubergine on her teeth to make them black.... After graduating in 1955 El Saadawi returned to her home village to work as a doctor, turning her experiences into a novel, Memoirs of a Woman Doctor. She also married her second husband, Rashad Bey, a lawyer, but swiftly divorced him when he proved too 'patriarchal.' He threw the manuscript of one of her novels out of the window, tore up her Medical Association card and once tried to throttle her.... El Saadawi’s anger was not just directed at Egypt, Islam and the Arab world. She was also a harsh critic of western hypocrisy, colonialism, militarism, capitalism and US support for Israel. She considered the Islamic veil to be a 'tool of oppression' but also condemned the make-up and clothes worn by women in the West. 'Women are pushed to be just bodies — either to be veiled under religion or to be veiled by make-up,' she said. 'They are told they shouldn’t face the world with their real face.'" 

From "Nawal El Saadawi obituary/Prolific Egyptian author and fearless campaigner for women’s rights who became the ‘Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab world’" (London Times).

"I want to keep wearing a mask after this is over. I can just go and do my thing, and I don’t have to interact with people. It’s liberating."

Said the 16-year-old son of the author of this WaPo column, "Here are the people who love wearing masks."

The author, Petula Dvorak, collects some other pro-mask statements:

“I love wearing a mask. I want to do this forever. It has helped my social anxiety so much.”...

“Wearing a mask is really letting me be ugly in peace. I love it here.”...

“I like not catching colds, not wearing makeup and not being noticed... So even vaccinated and with herd immunity, I’m still going to be hiding behind it.”...

“Wearing a mask means people can’t see my facial tics, and I love that... I’ve always chewed on my tongue ever since I was a kid... I also have a lot of facial acne that masks hide. Acne so bad that random people I meet on the day-to-day feel the need to comment on it and give me advice, as if I haven’t been to tons of dermatologists. I feel much less self-conscious out in public when I’m wearing a mask”...

“[My tardive dyskinesia] manifests as constant contortions of my mouth and tongue twirling... I was mortified to go out in public.”

From the comments over there:

"The hardline former Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says that the hijab law in Iran must be compatible with most people's wishes."

"Speaking to Mehdi Nasiri, the former editor-in-chief of an ultraconservative daily close to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ahmadinejad posed the question, 'If the parliament has passed a law, but the majority of the people rejected it, can one say that I would apply it at any cost?'"

Radio Farda reports.

"Zephyrinus's predecessor Pope Victor I had excommunicated Theodotus the Tanner for reviving a heresy that Christ only became God after his resurrection."

"Theodotus' followers formed a separate heretical community at Rome ruled by another Theodotus, the Money Changer, and Asclepiodotus. Natalius, who was tortured for his faith during the persecution, was persuaded by Asclepiodotus to become a bishop in their sect in exchange for a monthly stipend of 150 denarii. Natalius then reportedly experienced several visions warning him to abandon these heretics. According to an anonymous work entitled The Little Labyrinth... Natalius was whipped a whole night by an angel; the next day he donned sackcloth and ashes, and weeping bitterly threw himself at the feet of Zephyrinus."

Stray information about religion, picked up not because I was searching for the most depressing religion — see previous post — but because I was wondering what was happening in the world in the year 199 so I could make a joke to amuse someone who'd emailed me privately and made a typo in the process of writing that something had been going on since 1999.

The answer is that Zephyrinus became Pope in 199.

And I'm wondering — because I happen to be a person who audibly struggles with something while I am asleep (so I am told) — what it is like to be whipped a whole night by an angel. And will the whipping stop if I don the modern equivalent of sackcloth and ashes and throw myself at the feet of the modern equivalent of Zephyrinus?

ADDED: Gauguin's "Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)":

"... Ivanka. Always Ivanka. She stood tall on her stilettos. She rose, golden-haired, above the group."

"She was dressed in black cropped pants and blazer. She was toting a very large white handbag and later was wearing a matching face mask with tiny metallic stars.... and White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany... was in a closefitting double-breasted blazer with gold metallic buttons and skinny trousers. She was perched atop a pair of stiletto pumps — a style of footwear that this White House, all on its own, may be keeping in circulation."

From Robin Givhan's fashion-and-politics account of Trump's Bible-laden procession to St. John's Episcopal Church.

It wasn't a terribly far walk...



... but I was struck that the women had to — or chose to — wear stilettos. It made me think of those traditions of crawling to church — deliberately taking on pain and suffering as you make your way to the sacred destination. There are similarities and differences...



The look is not meant to say I am suffering. The idea is to walk fluidly alongside the men as if it's completely natural and perfectly comfortable. There's no visible expression of humility or sacrifice. If anything, the expression is of pride in the prettiness, the extra height, and the complete hiding of any difficulty.

So, it's a bit like a hair shirt, which is a hidden item of clothing that inflicts suffering and is worn as penitence. And yet the stilettos are not worn in secret. They are quite conspicuous and that is the point. And the suffering is merely endured, not undertaken for a higher purpose.

Have stilettos gone out of fashion? Robin Givhan — whose work requires her to keep up with fashion — calls them a "style of footwear that this White House, all on its own, may be keeping in circulation." That has to mean they are passé. Maybe it's like the way right-wing women in the 1960s continued to wear teased, sprayed bouffant hairdos long after other women had moved on to what was called "the natural look."