Trying to Look Different Hijab as the Self-Presentation of Social Moruzzi

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Trying to Look Different: Hijab as the Self-Presentation of Social

Distinctions

Norma Claire Moruzzi

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume

28, Number 2, 2008, pp. 225-234 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

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Trying to Look Different:

Hijabas the Self-Presentation

of Social Distinctions

Norma Claire Moruzzi

Context

ne of the fundamental problems of modern society is the question not of womens

public presence but of womens public representation. How should women look, or

be looked at, in public (the problem of the gaze)? How should women act or behave

(the problem of agency)? Who sets the rules (the problem of propriety and, beyond that, the

problem of the law, whether the law is understood as social convention, legal stricture, or phal-

lic authority)? In societies where citizenship is accepted as the basis of the polity, feminism is

essentially the struggle over defining womens citizenship, that is, their role as citizens, and

their public participation as members of the polity. Within the historical scope of that defini-

tion, feminism is inextricable from the process of democratization.1

Democratization itself is inevitably a modern experience, taking its inspiration from a

classical city-state ideal but having evolved as a scattered and stuttering process over the pastthree hundred or so years. That is a relatively short historical frame, spread across a wide

geographical area. Although womens formal participation as citizens, as members of the

public, is habitually initially resisted, it is also almost inevitably eventually granted as part of

the local struggle over claiming and defining democratization.2Democratization opens up

the question of citizenship, citizenship opens up the question of womens civic participation,

and womens civic participation opens up the question of women in (the) public. Once women

are citizens, they are members of the public, and as such they cannot unproblematically be

excluded from participating in the public sphere, from being in public themselves. Therefore

the modern question, the modern argument, is not over womens public participation, as the

conclusion to that is relatively foregone. The question, the argument, the struggle, is over

All interviews were conducted in Farsi. Unless otherwise noted,

all translations are mine.

1. Although feminism often functions as a social (as opposed

to a strictly political) movement, it is always linked to its con-

temporary political context. Recognizable modern feminism

begins with the fundamental challenges of the French Revo-

lution, whether the rst feminist(s) is identied as Mary Woll-

stonecraft or Olympe de Gouges, Sophie de Condorcet, and the

Cercle Social. Premodern writers on womens role or nature, like

Christine de Pisan, wrote within the paradigm of xed, ordained

identities, without the preoccupations with rights and agencies

that are the marks of modern democratic arguments.

2. This is true not only in the West, where the 150-year-long

struggle for womens suffrage began to succeed in the early and

mid-twentieth century. The same pattern can be recognized in

other parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East, where

womens rights are sometimes granted as legitimating parts of

an authoritarian modernization project, as in Egypt, but can also

be incorporated in populist revolutionary projects, as in Iran.


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womens public (self-)representation: the man-

ner of their presence, the limits to their act ions,

and the autonomy of their role.3

Focus

This article deals with that most superficial of

outward appearances, the codes of dress. Partic-

ularly in societies in which dress is actually leg-islated, whether through sumptuary or modesty

laws, the codes of self-representation are both

publicly explicit and keenly personal.4Within

set limits, I define myself, and I am defined, by

my adaptation to the representational code. But

whether I efface myself or flaunt my identity de-

pends as much on others interpretation of my

representation as it does on my intentions them-

selves. How well have I util ized the codes? And

since a code is also a (masked) language, how

well have others deciphered its meaning?5

In the contemporary Islamic Republic of

Iran, the codes of dress have been most conten-

tiously utilized by women, especially younger

women. The most casual vi sitor to Tehrans

streets has been able to observe the progress

in womens adaptation of state-mandated hijab:

more and more visible hair and makeup and

shorter and tighter jackets and pants. The ubiq-

uitous Tehran badhijabis usually taken to be a

youthful resi stance to the regimes authority,

or even an eroticization of the public sphere.

6

The corollary to this is the assumption that

young women who individually insist on mod-

est veiling are the unfashionable remnants of a

repressed, premodern element of regime sup-

porters.7But is this an accurate reading of the

(dress) codes of interpretation? If dress is rec-

ognized as a form of public self-representation,

and if womens public self-representation is one

of the key questions of the local process of de-

mocratization (in Iran as it is elsewhere), is it not

important to comprehend how local practitio-

ners use the codes? What are young women say-

ing through their dress? Is the language of hijab

only a discourse of modesty and eroticization, or

3. Scholarship on Western womens historical pres-

ence (whether in life or in literature) has extensively

examined the preoccupation with modern womens

entrance into public life and the controversies over

nice girls and ladies being (mis)taken for public

women. For various examples of historical docu-

ments and studies, see Patricia Hollis, ed., Women in

Public: The Womens Movement, 1850 1900(London:

Allen and Unwin, 1979); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amuse-

ments: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-

Century New York(Philadelphia: Temple UniversityPress, 1986); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex

and Class in New York, 17891860(Urbana: University

of Illinois Press, 1987); and Mary P. Ryan, Women in

Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825 1880(Bal-

timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). For an

example of literary studies on the narratives of wom-

ens entrance into a more public life, see Cynthia Wall,

At the Blue Boar, over-against Catherine-Street in

the Strand: Forms of Address in London Streets, in

The Streets of London: From the Great Fire to the Great

Stink, ed. Tim Hitchcock and Heather Shore (London:

Rivers Or am Press, 20 03), 10 26.

4. There is an extensive scholarship on the meanings

and modes of Muslim womens dress, ranging from

passing discussions in the eighteenth-century travel

writings of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, to Frantz

Fanons mid-twentieth-century analyses of the Alge-

rian revolution, to more recent studies of the politi-

cization (or not) of contemporary hijab. For some of

the more noteworthy examples, see Fatima Mernissi,

The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation

of Womens Rights in Islam, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland

(New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991); Arlene Elowe

Macleod,Accommo dating Protest: Working Women,

the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo(New York: Co-

lumbia University Press, 1991); Leila Ahmed, The Dis-

course of the Veil, chap. 8 in Women and Gender in

Islam(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992);

Franoise Gaspard and Farhad Khosrokhaver, Le fou-

lard et la Rpublique(The Headscarf and the Republic)

(Paris: La Dcouverte, 1995); Nilfer Gle, The Forbid-

den Modern: Civilization and Veiling(Ann Arbor: Uni-

versity of Michigan Press, 1996) ; and Camron Michael

Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman:

Gender, State Policy, and Popular Culture, 1865 1946

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002).

5. One of the most important analyses of the differ-

ing manipulations of the codes of Muslim womens

self-representation, as well as their represe ntation

by others, remains Afsaneh Najmabadi, Veiled Dis-

course Unveiled Bodies, Feminist Studies19 (1993):

487 518. Najmabadis study of Bibi Khanoum Astara-

badis nineteenth-century narrative strategies for re-

sponding, in her text Vices of Men, to the misogynist

contemporary advice manual Disciplining Womenof-

fers an early instance of a womans playing with rec-

ognized cultural codes to satirical, and proto-feminist,

effect. In a different interpretive sphere, some of the

most provocative writings on the linked issues of rep-

resentation and observation have been produced by

feminist lm theory, particularly its development of

the theory of the (male) gaze as productive of wom-

ens (self-)representation. See Laura Mulvey, Vi-

sual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen16, no. 3

(1975): 6 18; and Mary Ann Doane, Film and the Mas-

querade: Theorizing the Female Spectator, Screen23,

nos. 3 4 (1982): 74 88.

6. Hence, in a Muslim context, the existence of a

democratic public space depends on the social en-

counter between the sexes and on the eroticization

of the public sphere (Nilfer Gle, The Freedom of

Seduction: Dening Identity in Non-Western Terms,

New Perspectives Quarterly19 [2002]: 78 ). Gles pass-

ing remark has been eagerly taken up by those who

would read Iranian youth street fashion as a radical

political statement. Boys on skateboards and girls

wearing tight coats and makeup became the appar-

ent symbols of a youth movement the observers were

generally determined to identify as political. Particu-

larly in the later Khatami period (2002 5), this was

the standard interpretation of Iranian (or specically

Tehran) street life by outside observers, whether in-

ternational journalists or academics on a ying visit

through the capital. This interpretation has oftenrested on the observers taking at face value the asser-

tions by middle-class youth that their life is entirely

empty and Islamically repressed, compared with

their highly idealized conception of a prerevolution-

ary youth utopia of liberated fun and games. (This de-

spite the counterarguments by their elders that they

actually enjoy much greater social freedom than did

the previous generations, as a result of a lessening of

family supervision and a much greater tolerance for

unsupervised heterosexual mingling.) The class com-

ponent of par ticular youth behaviors is also usually

missing from these interpretations. See for instance

Mahnaz Shirali, Visibility in Public Space, in Islam in

Public: Turkey, Iran, and Europe, ed. Nilfer Gle and

Ludwig Ammann (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi UniversityPress, 2006 ), 313 33.

7. Even writers who presumably have a rmer grasp

of Iranian youth culture often betray a startling will-

ingness to project their own conceptions of veiled

girls Islamically oppressed lives onto their tantaliz-

ingly unknown subjects. Despite the freshness of

her prose and perceptions of her own life and social

circle, this is true even of Azadeh Moavenis Lipstick

Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and

American in Iran(New York: Public Affairs, 2005).


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S e l f P r e s e n t a t i o n o f S o c i a l D i s t i n c t i o n s

is it also, like other sumptuary codes, a discourse

of differential class and of social status?8

Argument

I maintain that aspiring young Tehrani women

choose their style of hijabas one way of publicly

staking their claims to different forms of rec-

ognized social capital. Badhijabgirls use minorinnovations in dress cut or color to distinguish

themselves as fashion leaders, identifying their

best options for an upward social trajectory

with a Western model of consumer culture and

sexualized modernity. But chadori(modestly

veiled) girls do not necessarily always wear their

chadors. These young women describe adapt-

ing their veiling to suit particular social circum-

stances (head scarf and manteau to do imper-

sonal local grocery shopping, and chador for

personal and professional social occasions) and

very consciously describe their specific modest

hijabas the public social marker of their affili-

ation with elite religious families.9While the

chadors of provincial girls are seen as simply

religious or traditional forms of dress, Tehran

chadorigirls wear a chador to claim a place in

the social trajectories of an established elite,

without implying a specific political or religious

commitment. For educated young urban Ira-

nian women, self-representation through hijabis

a conscious manifestation of different forms of

social status more than a naturalized indicationof political or religious identification.

Method

During , in-depth interviews were con-

ducted in Tehran with young women aged

nineteen to twenty-nine, most of whom were

university students. Approximately twelve

in-depth interviews were conducted, supple-

mented by more informal conversations as well

as participant observation in both public spaces(streets, coffee shops, and university areas) and

private homes. The relatively small number of

interviews precludes any absolute conclusions

about young womens style of dress. But their

responses definitely indicate a self-conscious

deployment of dress as a constructed form of

social representation, according to what they

understand to be publicly recognizable signs

of social identity. In spring and summer ,

follow-up research was done in Tehran, which

included the period of the governments freshly

enthusiastic crackdown on Islamically improper

dress, a crackdown that almost exclusively tar-

geted young people of both sexes.10The youth

response to the increased official repression

of individual dress styles bore out the implica-

tions of the earlier research, that youth cloth-

ing choices are social rather than political re-

sponses to opportunities and pressures in the

larger public context.

The theoretical interpretation of these so-

cial ethnographies draws on Pierre Bourdieus

work on the embodiment of social distinctionwithin a familiar spatial, cultural, and economic

8. Gle is one of the few scholars who has consis-

tently insisted on placing the question of modern

Muslim womens dress within the framing concepts

of public space / the public sphere, distinction, per-

formativity, and the historical experience of creating

a socially recognizable self-representation, rather

than addressing the question as one of essential-

ized religious identity. See Nilfer Gle, The Gen-

dered Nature of the Public Sphere, Pubic Culture10

(1997), 61 81; and Gle, Islamic Visibilities and Public

Sphere, in Gle and Ammann, Islam in Public, 3 43.

9. Manteau, the French word for overcoat, has been

adopted as the Farsi term for the overgarments

(jacke ts/ overcoa ts/ cape s) worn b y m ore sec ular-

minded Iranian women in order to fulll the require-

ments for public hijab. A manteau can be outerwear

worn on the street or a more tted jacket worn in-

doors as professional dress.

10. During winter 2006 and spring 2007, young Ira-

nian men for the rst time embarked on the kind of

radically provocative street fashion that had for years

been the exclusive province of young women. While

young womensbadhijabhad ceased to become espe-

cially noteworthy, in that it continued to make quan-

titative rather than qualitative changes in a fairly

standardized dress style (ever shorter and tighter

jackets, lots of expos ed hair, and heavy makeup), the

hairstyles of boys in this period suddenly exploded.

This was almost literal: gelled and spiked, the hair of

the young men on parade in the upscale shopping

areas of north Tehran often stood out several inches

above and around their heads. This was not merely

styled long hair, but a particular fashion innovation

(a kind of punk look without the grunge attitude,

sported by would-be yuppie clubbers) that was indig-enous to Tehran, although slightly less extreme ver-

sions could be spotted in other parts of the country.

The boys rather abrupt entrance into the street com-

petition for badhijabdistinction meant that the lat-

est police crackdown on un-Islamic appearance and

behavior was not targeted only at women. The simul-

taneous crackdown on thugs in more working-class

neighborhoods seems to have been part of the same

wave of youth repression, even though for those

young men appearance was not necessarily the main

criterion.


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frame: the hierarchies of social capital natural-

ized in the space of the habitus.11The key to

Bourdieus class mapping is the recognition

that each unique but generalizable individual is

located in a spatial and social context in which

they recognize themselves and are recognized,

and that their identity within that space of

habitual self-recognition (the habitus) is a dy-namic coordination of three social vectors: type

of social capital (whether economic or cultural),

amount of social capital, and change over time.

The integration of time into the social map is

critical, as it is the transient factor that reveals

the combined instability and consolidation of

class positions. But the specification of types of

social capital is also important, as it clarifies the

competition between parallel class fragments

and acknowledges the often vicious competition

for hegemonic claims between different frag-

ments of the same general class position. Bour-

dieu, writing about the hegemonically domi-

nant cultural values of the French nation-state,

distinguishes between cultural capital and eco-

nomic capital and leaves it at that: bohemians

versus bourgeois. But within modern Iranian

national history there is no clearly hegemonic

cultural system, and the cultural sponsorship of

the state carries an emphatic value. Compared

with Bourdieus simple French dichotomy be -

tween economic and cultural capital, Iranian

society is sti ll involved in a competition for hege-monic dominance among two forms of cultural

capital: secular and religious.

Thus the Iranian social map involves an

additional, confusing dimension in that cultural

social capital is itself competitively bifurcated,

in addition to remaining in competition with

economic social capital. This further pluraliza-

tion of social capitals complicates but does not

otherwise dramatically alter the inherent struc-

ture of Bourdieus social mapping. The valence

of class position is worked out of the combina-tion of types of social capital (economic capital,

secular cultural capital, and religious cultural

capital), combined amount of social capitals,

and change in both amount and composition

over time. It is not at all that society and status

in Iran are chaotic but that their social struc-

ture is more complexly pluralistic and dynamic

than most.

Dressing Up in Tehran

University students are actively engaged in the

negotiation of their class position, since the

commitment to education is an investment that

is presumed to yield greater benefit in the fu-

ture than in the present. University education

is by definition secular education, even at a reli-

giously affiliated university, if the curriculum is

based on the secular disciplines of hard and in-

terpretive science rather than the parallel tradi-

tion of theological interpretation and commen-

tary. A doctorate in religion is a secular degree,

no matter the level of faith of the doctor. Even in

the Islamic Republic of Iran, religious students

who study at secular universities, as opposed to

theological seminaries, are pursuing through

education an investment in secular cu ltural

capital. Secularly identified students are pursu-

ing a similar investment. Apparently, both types

of students have made a choice between types of

cultural capital and have identified their future

trajectory with a secular education. But dress,

which is often the prime public indicator of re-

ligious or secular cultural orientation, indicatesa more complex situation. In a national context

in which the state affirms religious identifica-

tion but values technocratic knowledge, dress

becomes a tactic for emphasizing ones priority

or hedging ones bets.

Among young Tehrani women university

students, different styles of (state-mandated)

hijabhave become a way of negotiating the

dress codes of public self-representation. Ob-

servers often assume that badhijabgirls are re-

belling against the patriarchal repression ofthe state. But interviews with the young women

themselves indicate that they are consciously

11. See Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique

of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cam-

bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); and

Pierre Bourdieu and Loc Wacquant,An Invi tation to

Reexive Sociology(Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1992). Bourdieu uses the term habitusaccord-

ing to his own denition: Endeavoring to reconsti-

tute the units most homogeneous from the point

of view of the conditions of production of habitus,

i.e., with respect to the elementary conditions of

existence and the resultant conditionings, one can

construct a space whose three fundamental dimen-

sions are dened by volume of capital, composition of

capital, and change in these two properties over time

(manifested by past and potential trajectory in social

space) (emphasis added). Bourdieu, Distinction , 114.


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defining themselves much more against their

peers than against a legal statute. As with trend-

setting for young women everywhere, this is a

delicate game involving distinguishing oneself

both from the ordinary crowd and from those

girls who are perceived as going too far, as mak-

ing too much of a spectacle of themselves. One

young woman, an art student, ident if ied thegirls who are too aggressively showy (arz-eh

andom) as those who wear oversize sunglasses

(especially if perched up on top of their scarf)

and who emphatically color their hair (a sort of

twenty-first-century Persian youth Jackie Onassis

look). Yet this same young woman proudly iden-

tifies herself as someone who can set a trend.

During spring and summer , manteaus in

Tehran suddenly started appearing in particu-

larly bright fashion colors: hot pink, lime green,

and turquoise. According to this young woman,

these color innovations came from the Tehrani

youth themselves, including her own example:

I myself follow fashion, but I make fashion, be-

cause when I dress like this, it becomes a kind of

fashion. My younger sister sews everything for

me which I describe for her. For example, I told

my sister to sew an orange manteau and I was

wearing it, and there was a store in the st reet

where I was pas sing ever y day, and the shop-

keeper saw me in an orange manteau, and after

that he put an orange manteau in his shop win-

dow, and I noticed that, because before therewas no orange manteau in his vitrine.

She identifies this ability to set trends not merely

with her own personal style but w ith the style

of art students generally: I think the girls who

study art have a great share in this [changing

the style of dress] because they invent some-

thing, and then it becomes widespread among

other girls.

This young woman art student and her

colleagues take pains to emphasize both their

affiliation with and distinction from secular,commercial, Western youth culture. Although

they set themselves apart in relation to a West-

ern cultural model, their local experience, par-

ticularly the experience of hijabas a youth street

fashion, is an indigenous creation: This [street

fashion] hasnt been brought by satellite [televi-

sion], these are styles that have been invented

by Iranian girls. Maybe in some parties they

are wearing like in satellite TV, but not in the

streets. Satellite television, which in this period

primarily meant the programming of Iranian

exile stations produced in Southern California

(and two years later included the more profes-

sional Persian-language broadcasts of Voice of

America), provides an accessible imagery of an

apparently authentic Western youth culture. But

these secular Tehrani youth insist on their ownauthenticity; rather than merely mimick appro-

priated foreign styles, they position themselves

as independent innovators.

Like any classic avant garde, they claim

the social capital of substantive creators, not

mere fashion plates or fashion followers. In

order to best position themselves on an upward

trajectory of social positioning that would dis-

play their sophisticated accumulation of secular

cultural capital, they must identify themselves as

serious students and easy cultural negotiators.

The girls with the big sunglasses, fancy hair, and

too much makeup are dismissed as superficial

show-offs; their investment is in feminine capi-

tal appropriate only to the marriage market,

rather than to the wider social field. Describ-

ing her own self-presentation in the university,

one such student explained that she uses less

makeup there than others do, and less than she

otherwise uses socially: Because in the uni ev-

erybody wants to show off. Normally girls whose

work is very good, they dont need to show off,

but girls whose work is not so good, they wantto compensate with makeup. Thats why I dont

want to use a lot of makeup. Asked whether she

thinks that makeup is a kind of compensation,

she says, Yes, because they want to be pointed

out, thats it. But I cant make my hair like them,

I cant use makeup like them. Therefore I said

to myself, I cant compete with them, I have to

distinguish myself another way. This young

woman chooses to distinguish herself as a good

student and even a trendsetter, but she carefully

distances herself from the girls whose overlyfashionable self-presentation compromises pub-

lic recognition of their other capacities. Another

student describes the need to temper feminine

self-expression with self-restraint: Sometimes I

would like to be in green [in a br ight outfit],

and it makes me so happy that I dont care about

the strange looks. I want to feel like this [freer

in her dress], but often I cant. For the young

women who would posit ion themselves in the


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Iranian social field through the deployment of

secular cultural capital, the tension is between

being recognized as a cultural leader, and being

mistaken for a floozy. In order to be taken seri-

ously, a Tehrani girl, like girls everywhere, has

to distingui sh herself from her peers, while

taking care not to compromise her options by

making the wrong kind of feminine spectacleof herself.

Choosing Chadors

For Tehrani chadorigirls, the language of dress

is not necessarily any simpler. If anything, it may

be more complex, because the nuances of this

form of hijab, when worn by university students,

seem to be more opaque to outside observers.

Among themselves, Tehran university students

agree that a students wearing of a chador can

mean one of three things: that the girl is from

the provinces, in which case she will probably

switch to a manteau/russari(coat / head scarf)

combination after a few months; that she is from

a poor or traditional family, in which case she

certainly wi ll not be regarded as a trendsetter;

or that she is from an elite religious family, in

which case her chador is taken as a marker of

social status rather than a sign of piety. Among

Tehran university students, continuing to wear

a chador is a sign either of traditional, working-

class identity or of very high elite status.

Chadoristudents explicitly describe wear-ing the chador as different from other forms of

modest veiling. A chadoriindustrial design stu-

dent, asked if very modest hijab(wearing a tight

scarf or maghneh, with no v isible hair and no

makeup, and a loose dark manteau) is similar to

being chadori, says, No.12When asked how they

are different, she answers simply, In our society

veiling is different from being chadori. Part of

it is related to a kind of self-distinction. Asked

if she means a kind of class status and social

distinction, she responds, Partly. When she isasked if she means that they are not religiously

different but different in that way (social dis -

tinction), she replies, Exactly. For these young

women, religious obligation can be as well ful-

filled by other forms of modest hijab. Wearing a

chador is a choice to do with social relations, not

religious obligations. The same young woman

explains that under different national circum-

stances, she would make different choices in her

self-presentation: If veiling was not imposed, I

wouldnt choose chador, I would choose colored

things, manteau and scarf. Asked whether shemeant that she wears chador because she wants

to make herself distinct from those who have to

veil (although they disagree with it) or have to

be chadori, she explains, Exactly. This is a kind

of distinction that I make. When asked if veiling

were not imposed, would she have any reason to

wear chador, she replies, Right. I would have

no reason for that. If hijabwere not imposed by

the state, then wearing hijabwould be an indi-

vidualized public representation of a relig ious

identity and wearing colorful hijabwould be a

sign of participation in the avant garde of those

who make use of religious cultural capital. But

while hijabis imposed and colorful manteaus

are monopolized by secular badhijab, religious

girls choose other forms distinctive public self-

presentation.

But they do not always choose to wear

their chadors. The chador is a distinctive public

dress, a specific statement of identity and elite

affiliation. But sometimes putting on ones full

public persona is just too much of a bother, and

it is easier to grab something else. Even so, thereis the problem of getting the public presenta-

tion right: When shopping, errands, I wear

loose things, for practicality. But with relatives

or friends, I wear chador. But they dont impose

it. I wear it by myself too. If I dont wear chador,

I feel Im making a spectacle of myself [tableau

shodan]. But sometimes when I wear chador, Im

making a spectacle. I think you should wear

what you want, appropriate to the conditions,

sometimes chador, sometimes manteau/russari.

For this young woman, a university student inTehran from an important Mashhad clerical

family, the chador is a sign of her privileged af-

filiations. But privilege can also be a burden and

an obligation. Asked further about her descrip-

12. A maghnehis a kind of pull-on hooded cowl,

rather like a nuns wimple. It is considered very mod-

est, but some more secular girls also like it, as once

you put it on, it stays put, as opposed to the continual

fussing required to adjust a head scarf.


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tion of sometimes feeling self-conscious when

she is wearing a chador, and when she is not,

she explains that she feels torn by her desire to

choose her dress (and her self-representation),

and her awareness that any choice of hijabfor

her is already over-signified. People expect her

to wear chador, and if she does not, it is taken to

be a statement of altered identity, rather than apractical choice of the moment.

This particular student is highly aware of

the problem of public self-representation, not

only for her, but also for any young woman in

hijab. She makes a clear distinction between the

public presentation of her private and her pub-

lic identity, in other words, between her repre-

sentation of her individual self and her family

persona. When she speaks of being out in public

anonymously, she means as a private individ-

ual: grocery shopping (even locally where the

storekeepers and neighbors know her), hiking,

or running errands. As a private individual, she

can run around in manteau/russari. But her

public identity is more formalized, involving a

weightier professional public persona. Then she

needs to wear chador, or risk over-symbolizing

her choice of dress. In her public persona, not

wearing chador would be a scandal; no matter

how modest her hijab, she would be making a

spectacle of herself.

This public/private identity distinction cre-

ates a problem of consistency. This is especiallytrue because the distinction itself rests on the

perception of spectators, rather than a distinc-

tion between home and street. For this young

woman, the problem of public self-presentation

is the problem of the public sphere, not simply

public space. How to keep track of which self

is in which public at the moment? Do her pub-

lic appearances as a private individual (without

chador, when not in the public sphere even if

she is in the public street) make her a hypocrite

when she i s chadori(even if she is in a privatehome, but in the public sphere because she is

under the gaze of those who expect her public

persona)?

The accusation of hypocrisy haunts her:

I dont want to be two persons, so Im almost al-

ways wearing it [the chador], except for buying

things, but Im usually wearing it, so I wont be

two persons. Insofar as I cant manage to be who

I want to, I dont want to be seen as two differentpersons, for instance, before my fathers friends.

They know I am without chador in the moun-

tains, or shopping. But even that I dont like in

myself. I would want to choose for myself, but I

dont have the freedom of decision.

The lack of freedom she refers to here is the

obligation to social conformity. Her family does

not require her to wear chador, and she does

not like the imposition of hijabby the state. Yet

as a member of a public family, she feels the ob-

ligation of her familys reputation. Appearing

in manteau/russarirather than chador does not

risk her familys honor; it risks their (religious)

cultural capital, a risk all the same, and one that

she is not, or perhaps not yet, willing to take.

So she has found an effective, and practi-

cal, compromise. Because a traditional Iranian

urban chador requires at least one hand to hold

it together (unless the wearer is willing to grip it

in her teeth, which is not considered at all mod-

ern), it gets in the way of getting other things

done.13At the university, this student chooses

to wear what is referred to as Arabic chador,which is a chador that usually has some kind of

adornment (crochet or lacework) around the

face, but it mainly differs because it always has

two armholes. A kind of resting-on-the-head

cape, it is more common in religious cities like

Mashhad and Qom and is associated with Iraq.

Although its associat ions are therefore more

religious, the big practical advantage of the

Arabic chador is that it leaves the hands free.

For this student, this style of chador is a com-

promise, an easier way of managing daily lifewhile maintaining her obl igations to her posi-

13. The traditional black Iranian chador ( chador

dori, or swirly chador) has its origins among early-

twentieth-century (late Qajar period) elite urban

women who did not expect to have to carry anything

on the street and who wanted a more feminine,

floaty, graceful outer garment. The traditional

urban chador from that period was a multipiece gar-

ment that was layered and more enveloping. (Infor-

mation from personal communications with Dr. Man-

soureh Ettehadieh and Dr. Fatemeh Sadeghi.) Like

many other historical fashion trends (high heels or

the crinoline), and despite its later revolutionary as-

sociations, the swirly chador was initially intended

to designate elite women who could afford to be im-

practical while emphasizing their feminine graces.


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tion and her family. But it is also distinctive to

her personally, and it draws a certain amount of

attention. It is not the same chador her mother

wears, or her friends.

At least it was not in . By , this

highly self-conscious, individualistic chadorigirl

had become a trendsetter. In May , the Ira-

nian parliament approved a bill to promote na-tional rather than Western fashions. Despite

initial suspicions that the bill was simply part of

an attempt to further repress street fashions, at

least part of the governments intention was to

address the problem that some of the hostility of

Iranian youth to the conventional black chador

is because they consider it to be old-fashioned,

dowdy, difficult to wear, and impractical. The

chador needed a makeover, and an official com-

mittee was charged with selecting and designing

an updated but Islamically approved national

fashion. The clothes were publicly unveiled at a

government-sponsored fashion show in January

, the first postrevolutionary fashion show

complete with runway models.14But the shows

big promotional item an Arabic chador with

sleeves also drew attention to one of the main

complaints: that these colorful, dressy Islamic

fashions were too Arab -influenced and that

innovative indigenous Iranian fashions were

present not on the runway but on the street.15

The young chadoristudents smartly carried-off

personal improvisation carried very differentweight when burdened with the sanction of of-

ficial government committee approval.

Nonetheless, the new sleeved chador was

definitely more wearable, and during the in-

creased police crackdown on badhijabin summer

, it became noticeably more visible. Girls in

manteau/russarioutfits toned down their color

schemes and kept their sleeves, trousers, and

coat hems a little longer. But some girls seem

to have decided to opt for the sleeved chador.

Wearing it in the summer weather, they avoided

the real hassle of managing an ordinary chador

(which not only has to be held in place but

should actually be worn over a full under-outfit

of manteau and russarior maghneh) and the

possible hassle of being bothered by the mor-

als police. But clothing choice is always about

self-representation as well as practicality. The

young women who decided in summer totry the new national fashion also were respond-

ing to the latest shift in the street-level competi-

tion between cultural capitals and were allying

themselves, at least for the time being, with the

resurgent Islamic template. This does not mean

that they, or their society, were becoming more

religious. But in the game of social distinction,

playing with the codes of secular cultural capi-

tal had suddenly become more costly, while the

codes of religious cultural capital were at least

temporarily ascendant. Wearing the new na-

tional fashion, young Tehrani women could be

confident that their self-presentation was defi-

nitely modern and appropriately distinct: chic,

trendy, and secure in the dominant paradigm.

But the dominance of the Iranian cultural

paradigm is itself not secure. After a few weeks,

the police harassment tapered down; Islamic

cultural capital may be dominant when backed

with the force of the police, but it is not socially

hegemonic. Slowly, color started coming back

to womens street clothing, and boys continued

to gel their hair, even if they did not spike itso resolutely. The competition continues. The

sleeved chador is a distinction of the moment,

an acknowledgment of ongoing cultural dynam-

ics rather than the consolidation of specific cul-

tural norms.

Public Dress, Private Politics, Social Codes

For modern young women everywhere, man-

agement of ones public self-presentation is a

balance of different forms of representation.

Appropriate display of feminine charms (the

14. The fashion show was jointly sponsored by the

Ministry of Interior and the Of ce of the Tehran Prov-

ince Governorship. The public spokeswoman for the

event was Ms. Ghandforoush, who held a dual post as

Womens Adviser to the Ministry of Interior and the

Tehran Provincial Ofce and whose credentials are at

least in part based on her marriage to a high govern-

ment ofcial (a situation common, but by no means

limited, to Iran).

15. I dont think ordinary people will like this show

because everything comes from Arab culture, com-

plains Faranak, who says she wants something more

Iranian and indigenous. Her friend agrees: Here we

didnt see any thing interesting in terms o f colours

and designs we have much better stuff; just look on

the streets of Tehran theyre wearing much better

clothes. Frances Harrison, Iran Police Move into

Fashion Business, BBC News, 2 January 2007, news

.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6213854.stm.


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capital of the marriage market) needs to be

weighed in relation to intellectual seriousness,

family connections, and other standard forms

of cultural capital, not to mention access to

available forms of economic capital and the lat-

est attitudes of the state. It is important to be

noticed, but in the right way, and the definition

of that changes depending on the location ofthe individual in his or her habitus: a thrillingly

fresh look in one social milieu is simply sluttish-

ness in another; the subtle nuance of elegant

distinction in one context is regarded as drab

repression in another. So what is a girl to do?

The young women students described

here are negotiating their way through a con-

temporary Iranian context in which the borders

of each habitus blur and bleed into anothers.

They all must wear hijab, but they are all involved

in the game of distinctions that is the rule of

any modern social field. Their choice of dress is

their choice of self-representation, according to

recognized codes of social value: their plotting

of themselves on the map of diverse Iranian so-

cial capitals. All of these young women are at-

tempting to forward their own social trajectory,

to distinguish themselves among their peers

while keeping within the frame of acceptable

social convention. But these conventions are

fragmented between competing cultural stan-

dards (the competition between religious and

secular cultural hegemony) and therefore aremore liable to be misperceived, intentionally or

out of ignorance.

Some young women cling resolutely to

a fixed style of public identity and insist on its

social dominance. The more thoughtful eye

one another, eyeing especially those presenting

different forms of cultural affiliation, and ten-

tatively reach out to learn one anothers codes.

Often, they express parallel concerns, keyed to

slightly different definitions of public life. The

loosely covered, secular-identified student whowished she could wear green w ithout causing

such a fuss expresses the same kind of concern

about experiencing two kinds of public and pri-

vate self-presentation as does the chadoristudent

from the Mashhad religious family. But for the

girl-who-would-be-in-green, self-presentation in

public is anywhere out of the house, be it the

street, the campus, or the caf. Being in public

means being outside, and the private, individual

self is the self that can be presented in private,

in the home. For the girl from the elite religious

family, being at home often requires presenting

her formal, public identity, while the street can

afford the privacy of urban anonymity. Both

girls experience this distinction between public

and private as a sort of self-contradiction, and itconcerns them. But their experience of public

and private, and therefore their definitions of

the relevant space of social tension, is not neces-

sarily the same.

Dress as a form of self-representation is an

indication of public identity, but it is not a guar-

antee of behavior or belief. And it is not a guar-

antee of politics. The orange manteau trendset-

ter claimed she would defend her right to keep

her stylish look even by attending a demonstra-

tion. But she also said that if she experienced

more insults when walking on her own in the

street, she would choose to be more restrained.

Participating in a collective action would pro-

vide more securit y, and, as she put it, one fist

has no voice. The paradox is that it is unlikely

any collective action would be mounted over the

right of some young women to distinguish them-

selves from other young women. The capacity

for self-distinction being inevitably individual,

the heroic ideal of political agency fades at the

prospect of an increase in ordinary minor street

harassment. The reality of this limitation be-came clear during the police actions, when

despite the individual actions of some young

people who resisted arrest, and much popular

huffing and puffing about the repressive nature

of the state, neither the youth nor their elders

manifested a general social or political response

to the renewed public harassments.

Yet the experience of the multiplicity of

distinct hijabs does have political implications.

These university students, who recognize the

local codes of dress and interact with their so-cially differentiated peers, accept that they

represent a plurality of identities. And they un-

derstand that these identities are themselves po-

litically plural. The deployment of religious or

secular cultural capital does not predict an ab-

solute relationship to religion or the state. The

student from Mashhad, the one who wears an

Arabic chador, addressed this specifically:


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Sometimes my religious beliefs are very fuzzy,

I review them all the time, I doubt them, and

I know there are people who do not wear chador,

but they may believe in something that I cant

imagine.

I cannot make the connection between

chador and being a religious person.

We are conformis ts , we go along with

others [javzahdeh]. But its clear that the freedomof dress is one of the basic rights for everybody.

What I believe is that insofar as not all of

the clergy believe in the Islamic Republic of Iran,

not all of the chadoriwomen are religious.

But its intertwined with culture, not reli-

gion, and people cannot break through the struc-

tures, especially in religious cities like Mashhad,

or for famous families like mine, for whom the

judgment of the people is really important.

For this student, the dress codes of hijabare a so-

cial code of public obligation and negotiation.

But if she were to go study in France, where she

would be relat ively anonymous and therefore

private, she definitely would not wear chador,

and she might not even wear a scarf. Her family

agrees with this position. The codes of honor

and conduct there would be different, and her

responsibilities to them would have to match

her different local habitus.

Social distinction changes with the social

context. This experienced reality itself requires

a flexibility of response that acknowledges a cer-

tain respect for socially differentiated positions.In Iran, cultural capitals compete, and neither

religious nor secular elites are clearly hege-

monic. Within a merged social field, distinc-

tion is still an open game, and young womens

self-representations through the dress codes,

whether as badhijabor chadori, are prime forms

of contemporary public participation.

Documents

Trying to Look Different Hijab as the Self-Presentation of Social Moruzzi