Today, while a large sector of Iranian women voluntarily wear the hijab, women from all parts of Iran and all socioeconomic backgrounds are still defying hijab restrictions, and the struggle between them and the authorities and conservative citizens continues. A string of acid attacks on young women in the city of Isfahan last month raised questions as to whether the attacks were a response to the women wearing “bad hijab”—the term for a woman who does not adhere to the most restricted style of the hijab—and “un-Islamic” clothing.
Despite the threat of such violence or state-enforced punishment, Iranian women have recently been using social media to test boundaries. This past May, six young Iranians, three of them women without headscarves, posted a video of themselves dancing to Pharrell Williams’s global hit “Happy.” And a Facebook page called “My Stealthy Freedom,” featuring “selfies” of bareheaded women who have taken off the hijab, has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers and “likes.”
“The solution to women’s issues can only be achieved in a free and democratic society in which human energy is liberated, the energy of both women and men together. Our civilization is called human civilization and is not attributed only to men or women.”
