“By nature,” he explained, “I’m a pacifist.” But in Iran, he was a foot soldier in the struggle against the regime’s assault on beauty. He wanted to reclaim the roopoosh, make it exquisite and flattering, turn the Islamic uniform into a garment of aesthetic resistance. Khaleh Farzi nodded her head politely, and then buried her face in French Vogue.
“That’s really great, Arash. I really respect what you’re trying to do,” I said. “I need something functional, but attractive. I sit down a lot in front of clerics, so no front slits.”
He clapped his hands together joyfully. “I know exactly what you want.” He stood up and began circling the couch, eyeing my shoes and my bag. “I’m thinking feminine but minimalist. I am thinking Armani. I am not thinking St. John.”
He unraveled a roll of grayish, sea-foam green chiffon, and draped it over a square of the same fabric, in a pearly, light beige. “We’ll do this cut like a toga, in two tones, so that when you walk the beige will peek out underneath. It’ll be so elegant. So subtle. So modest.” He shrugged his shoulders lightly, shivering with delight. He then dropped a stack of Italian fashion magazines in my hands, and said his tailors could reproduce anything I wanted down to the stitch. I was bewitched. It might be worth it to stay in Iran after all, I thought, if I could acquire a custom-made, designer-inspired wardrobe at J. Crew prices.
Fashion as resistance. What an intriguing concept, and how heartening to find style in the land of everything-must-be-as-ugly-as-possible-at-all-times. Immersed in her magazine, Khaleh Farzi looked up to weigh in on color choices, but she couldn’t be bothered to have a manteau made for herself. For her part, she had worn the same shapeless, navy-blue roopoosh every day for the last four years. It looked atrocious the day she bought it, and four years later, it resembled a worn grocery sack. Am I khar (an ass), she said each time I nagged at her to buy something new, that I should spend money on this regime’s uniform?
The wardrobe she had accumulated throughout her life, the piles and piles of silk scarves acquired during two decades in America, reposed in her vault-like closet, wrapped in tissue. Many of her friends were similarly disinclined to prettify their roopoosh wardrobes, as this meant engaging with the Islamic Republic, something they avoided at all costs. They preferred to cloister in the company of old friends, in worlds carefully constructed to turn inward, and deflect the reality of the present as much as possible. That could mean wearing just one manteau for years, staying inside all day endlessly redecorating apartments, or supervising the denuding of a leathery old duck. But young women my age weren’t prepared to do that—there were parties to go to, hobbies to explore, men to flirt with, personalities to refine. In all likelihood, there would be no other world in which to do all this, and it made no sense waiting the system out, with so much living to do.
“So, are you going to the fashion show tomorrow?” Arash asked me.
“The what?”
“The fashion show. You know, catwalk, models, couture.”
“Yeah, I know what a fashion show is, thank you.” Arash was charming, but also a bit precious. “But are you sure? Here?” Maybe he meant on the television fashion network.
“It’s women only. Maybe I could sneak in under a chador? Too bad for me, but you should definitely go.”
The next morning, as I sat in traffic, I called up everyone in my mobile phone’s memory and told them I was on my way to a fashion show! Just saying those two words was exhilarating, but mostly no one believed me. There had been no fashion shows in Iran since 1979, when the revolution ordered women to cover themselves, and it was easier for my friends to believe that I was wrong (perhaps I had misread some notice in the paper?) than to imagine such a looming wall could crumble. A security guard stood outside the giant auditorium where the show was to be held, making sure only women entered. A few young men loitered outside, trying to peek inside the door when it swung open.
One part of me shivered with delight at the thought of a fashion show in the Islamic Republic. A public event dedicated to the expression and aesthetic of femininity, in a place so hostile to all things feminine and physical. Another part of me registered disappointment, because a regime-sanctioned catwalk signaled a societal entrenchment of the veil. I’d much rather be driving to a demonstration where women burned head scarves, rather than modeled them. But I reminded myself that women’s absorption in their physical appearance, in itself, communicated a powerful message. It meant they were not forfeiting their bodies, their right to express themselves, enshrined in the seemingly superficial but deeply symbolic matter of outer garb.
Excited young women filled the auditorium. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t remove their veils, since men were not permitted, but the veil had been internalized enough that in many such situations, women needlessly kept them on. The murmur of voices subsided, as the lights dimmed and a remix of Sting’s “Desert Rose” came on. The first collection consisted of clothes you could actually wear in public, an impressive array of short coats, tunics, and dresses, cut so they could be worn outdoors as roopoosh, but fine enough to be worn indoors as a top. This cleverly solved the problem of having to choose two outfits each day: the manteau/outer layer, and the under-layer that you would wear upon arrival at your destination. Inspired, I scribbled in my notebook: Have Arash make knee-length tunic with matching pants, and reversible silk coat.
Next came evening wear. Banal prom gowns, mostly, but a ripple of pleasure passed through the crowd, and they cheered energetically, as though they were imagining themselves making grand appearances at parties in those very outfits. There were only two looks on display, in keeping with the dated ways of being Iranian culture offered women: tart or lady. The lady aesthetic was demure, with lots of tulle and pastel sheaths. The vampy look involved slinky black dresses with lots of sequins. Both were covered in fur coats the models shimmied out of halfway down the runway.
As the models sauntered up and down the catwalk to the deep bass of jungle music, baring nose-rings, navels, and shoulders, something seemed off. Oh, I realized, it was the absence of clicking cameras and flashes going off. There would be no news reports or reviews of this fashion show in the local press. Like it never happened.
Afterward, I found the designer backstage, and asked her how she had managed to pull off a fashion show. The official sponsor, she said, was a cultural preservation organization that had registered the show as an exhibition of clothes embroidered by traditional handiwork. Then she launched into a lecture on how Iranians needed to create indigenous fashions and that we should “cross out the model of the West as inappropriate.” An emaciated model in designer underwear tapped her on the shoulder and asked if she could wear the finale white wedding dress at the afternoon show.
Between the navel rings and the Kate Moss models, I wasn’t sure exactly how the West was being rejected. Don’t you think young women favor Western fashion because they associate that style with a freer, more open lifestyle? I asked the designer. She blinked disingenuously, as though she could not fathom what I meant.
Iranian women, like women everywhere, expressed themselves in part through their physical appearance. Because the regime tried to take away this right by giving them uniforms, that task became a time-consuming, often obsessive challenge. This was not an overly intellectual or even original point. And it was breathtaking, how people who accommodated, and were accommodated by, the regime (often out of simple opportunism, like this fledgling designer), refused to admit it.
Oh well. Even if she was deluded or a hypocrite, at least she was creating clothes that Iranian women from all walks of life—not just the privileged women of northern Tehran—could feel good about wearing. She showed me the line she had designed for public-sector workers—well-cut tunic-pants combinations, in violets, and olives, with delicate embroidery, as an alternative to the drab smocks they presently wore. Her best uniforms, though, were designed for Iran Air flight attendants, who for twenty years had flown looking like veiled crows.
They were a rip-off of the uniforms the stewardesses on Emirates, a Gulf airline wore, but again, I forgave her. There was only so much you could do to jazz up a navy-blue hijab.
Since the revolution, Iranians who had left the country to live in the diaspora had not, for the most part, commuted back and forth. They came every few years, often much less frequently, some not at all. In the Khatami era, far-flung Iranians began traveling home more regularly. The general atmosphere had lightened, and there were new incentives on offer. My father’s cousin Mitra, for example, who had left Iran in 1999, came from Vancouver for a very specific reason. Liposuction. We all told her not to do it. I mean, who has liposuction done in a country where doctors are mercenaries, out to maximize profit? Yes, in the West medicine is also a business, but in Iran, it was literally all about money.
For some reason, doctors were exempt from paying taxes. This made medicine the most lucrative career around, save the guiding of the faithful. Say you accidentally chopped off a finger in the kitchen, while mincing heaps of sabzi, and called an ambulance. Unbeknownst to you, while you sat in the back nursing your bleeding stump of a finger, the ambulance drivers would be calling various hospitals on their cell phones, to see which doctors bid higher for your admittance. Once they had checked around, they would drive you to the hospital of the highest bidder, even if it happened to be miles farther than the one nearest your house. They auctioned you off, like a sheep or an ancient manuscript.
Cosmetic surgery was huge in Iran. Demand for procedures, particularly of the face, surged after 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini banned women from revealing the shape of their bodies. It was an investment in feeling modern, in the midst of the seventh-century atmosphere the mullahs were trying to create. It assuaged so many urges at once—to look better, to self-express, to show off that you could afford it, to appear Westernized. The compulsion to work these interior issues out through one’s appearance was a curious phenomenon unique to revolutionary Iran. In a way, it was dysfunctional—picking the scab of the right you didn’t have.
The voracious demand and the greed of doctors willing to get a quick specialization turned plastic surgery into a thriving industry. Procedures were not cheap (a quality facelift was almost $5,000), but half or less of the equivalent in the West. This obsession with achieving the ideal face, or the effect of trying, had long been restricted to the women of Tehran, who relished adorning what the regime told them to neglect.
But since my arrival, getting a nose job was the hip thing to do—for men. It was an unlikely phenomenon in the land of the bearded revolution. Some guys parted with their traditional Iranian nose in favor of a sleeker profile that better matched their Euro-trash pretensions—a nose that said I am vain, modern, and well-off enough to cultivate my image. Some older men chiseled away their noses for a youthful appearance, so they would look less incongruous dating women the age of their daughters. Some men didn’t submit their noses to the knife at all, but wore the post-surgical bandages anyway, because they looked cool. In the course of an average Thursday evening out, you could easily count a handful of guys sporting medical tape.
When I went plastic surgery shopping with Mitra, the waiting rooms were full of Iranian expatriate women, from places like Maryland and London, getting bargain treatments on their trips home to visit family. It all seemed so affordable and safe that I felt obligated to get something done. To live in Tehran and not surgically enhance something would be like going to a designer sample sale and walking out empty-handed.
But what? Maybe a nose job. These days you could get a very natural-looking nose in Tehran, unlike in the days of my mother, whose whole generation ended up with the very same profile. Apparently, there was only one man to trust with one’s nose in Tehran: Dr. Navab, otherwise known as “Dr. Goldfinger.” He used to practice in Paris but had relocated to Tehran after realizing that French women were more into toning their bodies, and Iranian women more into refining their faces. His facelifts were famous. Even the wives of European ambassadors went to him. At parties, if a woman walked in looking magically refreshed, guests would lift their eyebrows and maliciously whisper, “Dr. Navab?!”
The day Mitra and I went to visit him, a small group of chadori women stood outside his building, deliberating whether or not to enter. As we rang the bell, one of them broke away, and asked Mitra, in a shrill voice, “Excuse me, khanoum, did you get your nose done here?” She, of the perfect nose, shook her head, ignoring the rude question. Ah, I see, so you’re here to get your daughter’s nose done, the woman persisted, turning to me. My hand flew up to cover the maligned feature, defensively. Is it that bad? I whispered, as we were buzzed inside.
Dr. Navab himself was charming and full of flattery, as all plastic surgeons dealing with insecure, vain women should be. He spoke the esperanto of flattery in multiple dialects (joonam! chérie! honey!), and his office looked like an English library, all polished wood and brass. He wore a tie with daisies, and a matching silk handkerchief. There was an ode to his talent, composed by an adoring patient, on the wall: “Slowly, slowly, his artistic hand evokes the work of Michelangelo.” Next to it hung a before-Dr.-Navab /after-Dr.-Navab painting, by yet another patient-fan, of a haggard old woman transformed into a svelte model swinging a status handbag.
Mitra queried him about facelifts, and I explored the nose options. In the end, I decided getting a nose job was in poor taste. One day my daughter would go through my old photos, and divide the epochs of my life into pre- and post-nose job days, as I did with certain female relatives.
Preventive Botox would be less invasive, and more subtle. The queen of Tehran Botox, Dr. Fariba, had the same first name as my mother, which I interpreted as an auspicious sign. Her office was done in the same medical spa atmosphere as my Manhattan dermatologist—an airy space both posh and clinical, with Japanese prints on the walls, bamboo flowers in eclectic vases, and cappuccino at the ready. Dr. Fariba was a skilled therapist, beautician, and medical doctor rolled into one and spent as much time ministering to delicate egos as explaining the possible side effects of microdermabrasion. But she had her limits. She would not do Botox parties, though patients requested them. “I run a medical office, not a beauty salon,” she said.
In the end, I wimped out on Botox, too, but Mitra finally settled on liposuction, aiming to lose an inch off the circumference of her hips and thighs. I argued this was unnecessary. She was already beautiful, and I didn’t see why she should put herself through general anesthesia to go down a dress size. She shook her head dejectedly. At the end of the day, khanoum, there isn’t much else you can do about this flesh, she said, patting her Iranian saddlebags, our genetic predestiny.
After the surgery Mitra went to her mother’s apartment in Niyavaran to convalesce, and that is where I went to visit her, with my twin offerings of tuberoses and Vogue. She lay in the day bed of the sunny guest room, propped up against pillows. Outside, the birds chirped at unnaturally loud volume. There were pills and tea on the table. Here, pick out all the skinny pants you can wear now, I said, carefully placing the magazine on her lap. I lay down next to her, and turned the glossy pages, trying not to think about the seeping gauze bandages under the covers.
I reached for the bowl of apricots on the table, picked out a plump one, and passed it to Mitra. She took a nibble with a sip of tea. Our time together was usually spent with her two daughters, dancing in the living room or eating pizza on the balcony. This was our first private conversation.
I had always wanted to ask her about why she had decided to leave Iran, even after Khatami. Was it hard deciding to go, I asked. You stuck it out for so many years, what made it finally unbearable? She thought about it for several seconds, passing her finger back and forth over the apricot. When she finally did speak, it was not about the veil, or the violations of private life, or any of the daily degradations I had lived and expected to hear about. I couldn’t stand arguing with them anymore, she said, the Sister Fatimehs and Sister Zeinabs at the girls�
�� schools.
Mitra had two daughters, both teenagers. They would come home from school, having learned nothing useful, but with an earful of reprimands. “I would go down there every day, and ask them why my daughters were being treated like this. And they, these uneducated, unforgiving women, would stare down their noses at me, like, who was I to be asking questions about my daughters’ education.”
Every life in Iran came with its unique set of battles, most of which, like Mitra’s, were unknown to me. I had never tried to raise children under the Islamic Republic, so that particular challenge did not even occur to me. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like sending my daughters off to school each day, to be indoctrinated against me, their heads filled with an ideology that I would then need to unteach them at home. To be told that I, their mother, was anti-revolutionary, Westernized, immoral. Had I a choice, I realized, I might not have stayed to fight. Not if it meant sacrificing my daughters. The way I had learned to conceive of the Iranian nation, of devotion to homeland, was, after many months, still abstract. If I had children here, being pried from me and claimed for the revolution, if I had to go through a divorce under a system that stripped me of all my rights, then perhaps these notions of patriotism and loyalty would sound hollow.
Mitra’s cheek gently fell against a cushion, and her exhalations became regular. In the quietness of the moment, as twilight settled on the willow trees outside the window, I felt some of the guilt of belonging to the diaspora, to the tribe who left, recede. Through living here, through seeing all the complexity that went into people’s decisions to stay or leave, I was learning not to judge so harshly myself or others over such an intensely personal choice.
Lipstick Jihad Page 20
