Being free to let your hair down

Aradhika Sharma

Free! Wild! Tangled! Unruly! Challenging! Spirited! These adjectives define the hair of the woman who has the exact same qualities. The woman whose unconfined hair triggered off a movement for female liberation, is not just an ace journalist but also a champion of women’s rights in Islamic countries. She raises a strong and strident voice for the freedom of women — against ancient traditions that seek to shackle and customs that bind and confine.

Rebelling against adversity, both personal and political, Alinejad emerges as a person who proudly stands for what she believes in and has the endurance and capability to rise, fall and rise again. In the process, she finds so many unnamed voices that support her and readily back her cause to remove the confining and compulsory hijab. Her contention in a nutshell is that the hijab, when it is forced on women, is a tool to wrest their identity and make them an amorphous and voiceless gender. The adoption (or not) should be voluntary and acceptable to those who would use it. 

Hailing from a small village in Iran, Alinejad grew up with diktats of “It’s not allowed”, “Girls can’t do that”. Yet, she was given lessons in independence by her mother, who laboured as tirelessly in fields as her father did, and using her tailoring skills for profit, was probably the only woman in the village who earned money by her own enterprise. “Never be afraid of the darkness”, she taught young Masih, “but stare it down.” This lesson helped Alinejad to persevere and prevail throughout her life.

Alinejad’s free hair became the metaphor for independence. “What I want is to save my hair from the storm blowing over in my country” she wrote. And suddenly, a single post on her Facebook page, the first solitary picture of herself standing without hijab, face uncovered, hair blowing around her head, became a call to women to throw off the constricting garment. 

Thousands of women across Iran joined the online campaign, #My Stealthy Freedom and started posting pictures of their exposed hair. For these women, their posts became a strong mode of self-expression and rebellion against tyranny. Many of them had to defy their families, the radical government and the strict religious and social mores that governed them. Yet, the numbers rapidly rose to one million followers. #My Stealthy Freedom was followed by a new campaign #MyForbiddenSong, encouraging women to sing solo in public, an activity that the Islamic Republic fears, may trigger “immoral behaviour”.

The book is an autobiographical account of the author’s life, struggles, passions and politics. Alinejad is fearlessly honest as well as vulnerable in her disclosure. She writes with consummate ease and fluidity, drawing the reader into her life as she travels through times of rebellion, strife, imprisonment, exile, divorce (considered a terrible stigma) and separation from her son. There are interesting anecdotes from her childhood that amuse and beguile as well as stories of her distinguished career as an avant-garde journalist that inspire. The book is an immensely readable one that leaves the reader with a sense of value addition to her/his life.