May 8, 2004
IRANAMOK:
Those Sexy Iranians: Iran's baby boomers are transforming their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, 5/08/04, NY Times)
"There are some manteaus with slits on the sides up to the armpits," said Mahmoud Salehi, a 25-year-old manteau salesman. "And then there are the `commando manteaus,' with ties on the legs to show off the hips and an elastic under the breasts to accentuate the bust."Worse, from the point of view of hard-line mullahs, young women in such clothing aren't getting 74 lashes any more — they're getting dates.
"Parents can't defeat children," Mr. Salehi mused. "Children always defeat their parents."
And that's what Iran's baby boomers, a wave of 18 million people 15 to 25 years old, are doing. They will transform their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. I don't think Iran's theocracy can survive them, for I've never been to a country where young people seem more frustrated.
The regime's problem is that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini exhorted Iranians to have more children, and they responded — today, 60 percent of the country's population was born after his Iranian revolution. And these young people are determining social mores and carving out a small zone of freedom for themselves.
In one sense, the relaxation in clothing requirements is superficial, and some Iranian women have scolded me for asking them about head scarves when they are more angry about discrimination in divorce, child custody and inheritance rules. But the clothing rules affect every woman every day and raise the central question in Iran's future: should a few aging male mullahs still determine the most basic and intimate elements of every Iranian's life?
From that vantage point, it looks to me as if the revolution is sputtering. The mullahs are refusing to accept real democracy, but they are giving in to popular pressure in some areas. The draft is immensely unpopular among young men, for example, so this year the hard-liners shortened the service requirement. More important, individual Iranians are reclaiming their individuality and their autonomy — and how they dress is the best measure of that.
The morals police no longer order women to cover up stray hairs. These days, the fashion is for brightly colored, glittery see-through scarves, worn halfway back on the head.
"It's possible head scarves will be gone in another year or two, the way things are going," said Amir Suleimani, a scarf salesman in the Tehran Bazaar. "God willing."
No wonder conservative newspapers in Tehran denounce Iranian women for strolling around "nude."
The clergy risk doing serious damage to their society unless they undertake the inevitable reform themselves. It will not be helpful to Iran to go from totalitarianism to secularism. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2004 8:36 AM
In some respects, though, the whole middle east may benefit from the spectacle of an ayatollah swinging by his neck from a lamppost...
Posted by: M.Murcek at May 8, 2004 9:11 AMYour message reminds me of Tom Paine's message to America and George Washington, written from his cell in France. In the "Age of Reason" Paine attacked establishment religon but implied, based on events in France, that a nation can't live without it and survive as a moral entity, humankind being what we are. Paine, although irreligious, believed in a higher power and was, essentially, a moral man, used and abused by fundamentalists at both ends of the spectrum. Never a leader but always of influence, I believe he was one of the classical liberal founders and paid the price for being scrupulously honest. I wretch at the thought of the far left using his name for their ends. I think Paine would as well were he here.
Irreligious yes; anti-religious no.
I'll don my helmet now.
Posted by: genecis at May 8, 2004 9:47 AMMaybe later this century we will see a Persia where Baha'i and Zoroastrianism are the two religions vying for supremacy.
When I was in college during the final days of the Shah's reign, there was a Iranian co-ed exhange student with an upper body like Dolly Parton who would stop all male traffic in the dining hall when she would come in for lunch or dinner.
I'm assuming the reaction would have been the same were she to have strolled through her native land in the same type of clothes, which in no way were overly revealing. And I'm sure after 25 years of repression, a good percentage of Iranians wouldn't mind having that opportunity again, even if the women haven't sunk to the Christina Aguilera-Brittany Spears fashion level.
Posted by: John at May 8, 2004 12:58 PM
Christina Aguilara and Brittney Spears aren't "punk", shoving their style into our faces, like it or not; They're capitalist opportunists, giving the public what it wants, what sells.
They'd wear a burqa if it increased sales.
Thus, they're only as fallen as mainstream society.
Women allow their daughters to dress similarily every day.