One day I was walking with a female friend in Tehran when she was pulled away by the police and held in one of their offices for a few hours. Her crime? She wasn’t wearing the proper hijab — the head scarf that, in some interpretations of Islam, women must wear whenever they are in the presence of men who are not close relatives. In Iran, the government insists that all women wear it.
My friend was told to ask a friend or relative to bring the proper hijab for her to wear. Until it arrived, she could not leave. She told me that I shouldn’t just take photographs of wars, but that I should document what Iranians were experiencing in public life in a big city like Tehran.
Improper dress code, including insufficient coverage of a woman’s head, shoulders and chest in public is officially illegal and can incur arrest and fines. Though Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, whom many see as a moderate and a reformer, has said publicly that guidance on women’s dress code should be encouraged through education rather than enforced by the police, secular Iranian women continue to face censure for insufficiently modest dress.