Red Lips, No Veil

One Iranian-American student explains why her dissent begins with lipstick.

By Safa Samiezade’-Yazd, University of Denver
Wednesday January 4, 2006

This article first appeared in [dis]claimer, a Campus Progress supported publication.
 

I have never set foot out of the United States, but I grew up in Iran. My father is a radical Islamic fundamentalist who once almost got into a fistfight with a stranger who insulted the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini within his earshot. He immigrated to New York just after the Iranian revolution for graduate school at Columbia University. He was one of Iran’s brightest up-and-coming scholars from the University of Shiraz. He intended to study seismology and eventually return to serve his homeland. He moved to St. Louis, where he studied for his doctorate and found himself a wife, my mother, a young 24-year-old single mom of two boys. She was too naïve and too desperate to be taken care of to see his fanatical side. He forced her to wear a hijab till I was twelve years old. On her first day veil-free, a day of mourning for the family, he almost cried over his Qur’an and accused my mom of adultery because another man looked in her direction.

Growing up, I was forced to wear a hijab to the mosque every Sunday, where disgruntled teachers would tell me I was on my way to hell because I wrote poetry and played the violin. My father made me pray by him every day, a ritual I loathed because no matter how much Arabic I learned to recite, I never understood what the words meant. They were empty to me, meaningless sounds I uttered to some being I already knew condemned me to hell. In middle school, I would pack another outfit in my backpack that I would change into in the bathroom before first period. In high school I became more aware of my body and revealed more and more with every coming year; a short sleeve here, a long sleeve rolled up, a v-neck there, a skirt that came up to my knees. By this time, my father lived halfway across the country and would only come to visit every couple months, but I still felt him watching me. I still felt condemned. I kept a box in my closet of heavy clothes for when he would come.

I have not seen or talked to my father for about a year now, thinking that the separation would finally free me, but instead it has made me feel more trapped. As much as I hated him, he was my one connection to Iran, and as much as I hated the country, I still felt it in me. I walked away from my father when I finally realized that he was nothing more than a product of the Islamic Republic of mullahs and out-of-touch clerics. He lacked the strength to resist, but I was determined to have more vigor. For me, being strong means not fighting the Republic but letting it go. By staying hostile, I was letting it control me, just as it controlled my father.

There are times when I look at myself in the mirror and feel like I look too overdone; other times I feel like I stand out when I’m around people, especially men. I’ve become more aware of my habit of looking down when I talk to guys, something I think I picked up from childhood. It’s weird, the exposure I feel by covering my lips with lipstick. I feel like for the first time, I’m putting my femininity out in the open, something I was forced to keep private. I’ve also noticed that I’ve been dressing in longer-sleeved clothes recently, as if covering more skin is a necessary compensation for the red lips.

I’ve also been more defensive in justifying actions that don’t need justification. It’s so weird how this one little act of rebellion has aroused in me so many layers of insecurity and confusion, which is a very common theme in Iranian-American literature.

What Americans might see as vanity has strong politics behind it. Azadeh Moaveni, a former Time correspondent in Iran who just wrote “Lipstick Jihad,” said that Iranian-Americans are different from other hyphenated Americans because other hyphenated Americans are racially charged while Iranian-Americans are politically charged. They are inherently political because the revolution politicized everything, every action, every thought. My goal is to respond to the internalization of the revolution through my own internalization: wearing red lipstick everyday. I hope that makes sense. I tried to explain this all to a woman the other day, and she said I must have some really crazy dreams at night.

It has a very addicting edge to it, lipstick does. Maybe it’s the chemicals  in it, maybe it’s the allure of the red, the allure of blood-stained lips against a porcelain smooth face. It started with me forcing myself to dab it on every morning, right after brushing my teeth. An American vanity, red lipstick is a powerful political weapon in Iran, enough to send a woman to jail. In Iran, it isn’t narcissism, it’s a symbol. A symbol of insubordination, rebellion, saying “no” under your breath even when your voice is compelled by law to say “yes.”

Illustration: Matt Bors