One of Iran’s leading human rights lawyers advised the government “to recognize the right of women to control their bodies and choose their clothes” as the movement began to spread across social media.

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An Iranian woman’s public act of defiance against the government’s rules mandating wearing the headscarf last month in Tehran inspired at least a dozen other women to take off their veils in public this week, making waves in Iran and across social media. A photograph of the woman, reportedly named Vida Movahed, taken in central Tehran on Dec. 27, became an inadvertent icon for a week of raucous anti-government protests that began a day a later in eastern city of Mashhad and spread to towns and cities across the country. Movahed became famous in Iran as the “girl of Revolution Street,” a main thoroughfare in the capital that runs along the entrance to the University of Tehran. Described in social media accounts as a 31-year-old mother of a toddler, she was jailed and then released, only to be jailed again and released last weekend, according to human rights lawyers in Tehran. On Monday and Tuesday, photographs and video emerged of numerous women in the Iranian capital emulating Movahed, standing on street sides or atop utility boxes, their heads bared in open defiance of a rule that has been imposed on women since the country’s 1979 revolution. Some men, too, made the gesture in apparent acts of solidarity. “This is at least as important as the demonstration of one month ago, if not I would say even more important,” said a Tehran social scientist who specializes in women’s issues throughout the country. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities for speaking to international media. “More women are disobeying hijab, especially in cars, sometimes in streets. In the absence of any [opposition] leadership people are acting individually and then when it is supported by others then it will spread all over the country. Women and this movement of disobedience will be a very serious one.” Nasrin Sotoudeh, one of Iran’s leading human rights lawyers, predicted the movement would continue regardless of authorities’ reaction. “Iranian women have long been tired of contempt, insults, and threats,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I cannot predict the behavior of the government, but I advise it to recognize the right of women to control their bodies and choose their clothes."

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Amid rapid social, aesthetic, and technological change, the obligatory headscarf is the most visible and enduring sign of Iran’s Islamic character. It was imposed violently after the Shiite clergy and its followers took over the country nearly 40 years ago. Iranian women, especially in the cities, have long resisted it, pushing the edges of their headscarves back further and further to defy authorities. Morality enforcers, in recent years incorporated into municipal police, regularly stop women on the streets, fining, harassing, or jailing them for wearing “bad hijab,” a nebulous accusation that could include showing too much ankle or forearm, wearing too much makeup, or simply catching the eye of the resentful, recently urbanized young men and women who make up the regime’s shock troops. “The protests are a reminder that hijab was forced on many Iranian women right after the revolution,” said Omid Memarian, a New York–based Iranian journalist and commentator. “It was not something they signed up for.” Men, too, are sometimes harassed for hairstyles or dress deemed Western or offbeat. Iranian regime moderates last month sought to temper rising anger over the matter by ordering a relaxation of enforcement in Tehran, but harassment continues. In a Jan. 8 speech, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who has quarreled with hardliners, acknowledged the divide between the regime dominated by white-bearded clerics and their hardline military and paramilitary enforcers and the country’s youth. "People are right to say that we should look at them, listen to them, and respond to their demands," he said. “Today, the youth's view of the world and life is different from our view.”

Image taken via Telegram