Youth Movement

What happened when the country's schoolgirls took off their veils.

- By Azadeh Moaveni

One morning this past winter, the students at a girls' high school in Tehran were told that education officials would arrive that week to inspect their classrooms and check compliance with the school's dress code: specifically, the wearing of the maghnaeh, a hooded veil that became a requirement for schoolgirls in the years after the Iranian Revolution. During lunch, a group of students gathered in the schoolyard. A thirteen-year-old in the seventh grade, whom I'll call Nina, pressed in to hear what was being said. At the time, mass protests against the government were raging across the country; refusing to wear the veil had become a symbol of the movement. An older girl told the others that it was time for them to join together and make a stand.

The inspectors arrived the next morning. The teachers asked six girls from each grade to assemble in the schoolyard. Nina was not among them, but she knew the plan; she sat at her desk, doodling, her heart pounding with excitement. Outside, the winter sunlight cast shadows on the school's weathered brick walls. One of the girls raised her arm, a cue arranged in a WhatsApp group the night before, and then she and the others pulled off their head scarves and tossed them on the ground. For a moment, no one said anything. Then the girls were told to go back to their classrooms. Nina's teacher looked up in surprise as her students returned, bareheaded and flushed, but said nothing. The next day, nearly every girl in school showed up without a head scarf.