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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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Vol.28,No.2,2008
doi10.1215/1089201
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2008byDukeUniversityPr
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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H i j a b a s t h e
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.