Publics, Politics and Participation

Amir-Ebrahimi 329

The veiling is not only just covering the head; it indicates a

way of behavior, which is called to be more modest, more

pure—Puritan maybe—which means you limit your presence

in public life. For instance, the way you look at people. You

have to cast down the eyes. The way your body occupies the

space in public. That means you shouldn’t be too loud—laugh-

ing, for instance. So it means a way of behaving, more modest

behavior. It comes from hija, meaning being more cautious,

being more modest. So I think it’s not only just a kind of dress

code, but a dress code which indicates a set of manners, bodily

manners, in relation to the other sex, but in relation also to

public behavior.^11

To move more freely in post-revolutionary Iran, youth and women
have learned how to negotiate appropriate appearance and conduct in
diverse public and private settings through the use of multiple behavioral
strategies.
ew forms of expression have emerged alongside these strategies N
of appearance, and women and youth have become more outspoken in
public spaces. Paradoxically, the desexualization of public spaces has lib-
erated many women from the prohibitions imposed by their families and
provided them with the opportunity to enter public spaces, university or
work. Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut argues that the emergence of a new form
of individualization among women and youth, their resistance to forced
Islamization, their aspiration to modernity and their demands for social,
political and cultural rights may indicate the weakening of patriarchal
order in both public and private spheres.^12
t the same time, the need to use a set of complex and multiple A
performance strategies to move freely in post-revolutionary Iran has
provoked a gradual identity crisis, especially among Iranian youth.
Furthermore, middle class youth in the mid-1990s had access to oppor-
tunities for wider contact with the world, especially through satellite TV
and then the Internet. Through these new technologies, and broader rela-
tionships with the world (through the Iranian diaspora in contact with
family in Iran), new models of self-presentation were created that were in
complete contradiction with the Islamic and docile models presented by
the Islamic republic.