Tim Gunn, Paul Weller and other politics-of-style icons: this is your moment. The Iranian regime's latest attempt to purge the vestiges of the Green Movement from the hearts of dissatisfied Iranian youth strikes directly at the kids' unfortunately frosted tips.
Yes, the Iranian Culture Ministry has released grooming guidelines in order to guide wayward youth against looking un-Islamic. It's easy to joke about the absurdity of the measure. But there are state-run militias designed to enforce "virtue" – that is, conformity – in Iran, so it's no joke to the millions of people who have to live under a government measures the height of a pompadour in thermal degrees of hellfire. Similarly, in 2005, North Korea applied the secular equivalent, crafting an instructional module titled, "Let Us Trim Our Hair In Accordance With Socialist Lifestyle." Remember this the next time someone on TV brays that Obama is a tyrant.
One quick anecdote: In January 2006, I spent a couple of weeks reporting from Iraqi Kurdistan, and I learned from my 20-something driver and translator that the hot sounds on the streets of Irbil at the time came from a Persian pretty-boy duo called Kamran & Hooman. (I took a bootleg CD back to Washington.) Despite their occasionally saccharine crooning, Kamran & Hooman were not Mullah-approved: One of them had long feathered hair and the other had a George Michael thing going on. You can imagine what the religious police would have made of them.
My crew didn't just like their singing. They considered Kamran & Hooman subversive. Check out the video below for a sense of why.
A fair amount of Kamran & Hooman's internet presence appears to be unavailable, for whatever reason. But I found this picture of the duo on Facebook last June, days after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole his re-election and launched a campaign of popular suppression not seen for at least a decade. They're holding a sign that says "Stop Killing Our Students." Guys, if you're reading: Don't cut your hair.
Credit: Mehr
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