Following the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian regime imposed Islamic dress on women and, through legislation and the establishment of institutions such as the Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue, transformed the hijab into a legal obligation (Nouri, 2013; Khamenei, 2019). Across different political periods—from the later Pahlavi era, when the veil was prohibited, to the Islamic Republic, which made it compulsory—the female body has been treated as a battlefield of political conflict. Today, the state seeks to shape and control the appearance of the population through penal provisions, law-enforcement agencies, and the judiciary; families do so through upbringing and social pressure; the market through beauty advertising; and social media through the consumption and display of fashion. At the same time, resistance by women and young people, particularly after the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, has intensified the state’s challenge through various forms of dissent, ranging from street-level disobedience, such as the “Girls of Revolution Street,” to changing behaviour within families and even beneath the chador. The tension between the state’s restrictive position and the modern lifestyle of younger generations—which encompasses hybrid Islamic and Western fashions, social media, and advertising for cosmetic surgery—has become one of the central contradictions of contemporary Iran. Following the killing of Mahsa Amini, international authorities also emphasized the necessity of abolishing these laws and dismantling what they described as a “system of gender apartheid” (Iran Human Rights, 2023; United Nations, 2024). By examining legislation and religious directives, family and social expectations, transformations in the beauty market, and examples of everyday resistance, this article explains the dimensions and contradictions of bodily control in Iran from a gendered perspective.
In the Islamic Republic, compulsory hijab is codified in the discretionary-punishment laws and, in particular, Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code. Under this article, “women who appear in public streets and places without Islamic hijab shall be sentenced to imprisonment for between ten days and two months, or to a fine of between fifty thousand and five hundred thousand rials” (Islamic Penal Code, 1996; Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2023). According to Article 639 of the same law, women who “resist compulsory hijab or defend their right to freedom of dress” may also be charged with “prostitution” or “promoting prostitution” and sentenced to between one and ten years in prison (ibid.). In practice, these punishments define the removal of the hijab as a criminal act and may encompass behaviour ranging from pushing a headscarf back to openly opposing compulsory dress. In addition to these provisions, Parliament has approved the “Bill to Support the Family by Promoting the Culture of Chastity and Hijab,” which equates appearing without hijab “in person or in virtual spaces” with “nudity” and introduces new administrative and judicial punishments and restrictions, ranging from denial of banking and educational services to imprisonment and even, under certain interpretations and charges, the death penalty (Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2023). The bill, which was formally approved by official institutions in the autumn of 2023, explicitly encourages citizens to monitor one another and report instances of “improper hijab” or unveiling. Many legal scholars and international organizations have described the measure as a clear violation of freedom of expression and fundamental human rights (Iran Human Rights, 2023; United Nations, 2024). United Nations human-rights experts, for example, called for the law’s immediate repeal and characterized it as a continuation of gender apartheid.
The bodies responsible for enforcement include the national police, particularly the morality or public-security police, the Revolutionary Courts, the judiciary, and newer institutions such as the Headquarters for the Revival of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. These organizations conduct seasonal and, at times, permanent patrols of streets and businesses in order to inspect people’s clothing and appearance. Available reports indicate that tens of thousands of people are referred to the courts each year because their hijab is considered insufficient or invalid. Directly repressive patrols have, however, become less visible in recent years, and the methods of enforcement have changed. According to research by the Center for Human Rights in Iran, controls are now increasingly concentrated in smaller cities and implemented through surveillance cameras, plainclothes agents, and the closure of cafés and restaurants that admit women without hijab, rather than solely through visible street patrols. One example was the announced closure of at least fifty cafés and restaurants in smaller cities during the summer of 2025 for providing services to unveiled women. Judicial and media reports also indicate that, unlike during the early years of the Revolution, courts now frequently issue severe prison and flogging sentences for hijab-related offences. During the acts of civil unveiling associated with the “Girls of Revolution Street” protests in the winter of 2017–18 and the spring of 2018, for example, dozens of women and men symbolically removed or raised headscarves in public squares. Approximately ten participants subsequently received prison sentences of up to two years, while dozens of others were fined or flogged (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 2024). Even today, prominent civil activists and ordinary citizens alike remain vulnerable to arrest and to sentences of imprisonment or flogging. Independent media sometimes report that the morality police initially order alleged hijab offenders to attend week-long educational courses, while repeated offences can lead to imprisonment or corporal punishment (United Nations, 2024).
At the religious and jurisprudential level, the official authority of the state, represented by the Supreme Leader and influential Shi’a clerics, maintains an explicit position in favour of compulsory hijab. In response to a question in 2019, the Supreme Leader stated that women must cover themselves in the presence of unrelated men except for the face and the hands up to the wrists. He also stated that a husband does not have the right to beat his wife in order to compel her to observe hijab. According to Khamenei’s ruling, “a husband has no right to quarrel or resort to physical violence and is permitted only to offer gentle verbal instruction in accordance with the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice.” Official religious rulings also state that women’s makeup or adornment is impermissible when it is intended to attract the attention of unrelated men. Consequently, heavy eye makeup, shaped eyebrows, or eyebrow tattoos may be treated as impermissible adornments and, when regarded as forms of beautification according to social custom, may be required to be covered. These religious instructions have given direction and ideological legitimacy to the laws described above. They have also encouraged senior clerics and religious disciplinary boards at universities to demand reports concerning students considered noncompliant. Nevertheless, certain clerics and ayatollahs have suggested that the hijab issue cannot be resolved solely through force. In July 2026, for example, the state-run newspaper Iran quoted a university professor as saying that “hijab is fundamentally a cultural matter” and that, instead of bureaucratic confrontation, it should be addressed through “cultural development and persuasion.” A number of clerics and legal scholars have similarly argued that religious education, gradual cultural change, and rational legislation would constitute a more sustainable approach.
The family and the wider community also retain a traditional and powerful role in supervising the female body. In many families, girls are taught the importance of “preserving the family’s reputation” and maintaining “modesty,” while parents, husbands, or brothers may pressure women to observe hijab in its strictest form. Accounts of domestic and public violence make this pressure particularly visible. Testimonies collected by human-rights organizations indicate that some men have subjected women regarded as improperly veiled to physical violence. In June 2022, for example, a woman in Tehran told the Center for Human Rights in Iran that a man had dragged her to the ground and beaten her in the metro because she was not wearing a hijab. Much family and cultural pressure, however, is informal. Women and girls may be humiliated, threatened, socially isolated, or told that their clothing will damage their prospects of marriage. At the same time, some families have become more accommodating toward contemporary forms of dress. In certain urban households, mothers may privately overlook their daughters’ tight trousers or unconventional manteaus and may feel less intimidated by police surveillance. In more traditional rural communities, hijab rules are often enforced more strictly, and patrols associated with the promotion of virtue may operate with the participation of the Revolutionary Guards or local Basij forces. In metropolitan areas, by contrast, there is a greater tendency toward minimal compliance. The difference between cities and rural areas is significant. In Tehran and other large cities, young people’s clothing is often comparatively relaxed, with brighter colours and looser or more experimental styles, while women in smaller towns and villages may wear the chador more consistently or fasten their headscarves tightly. Class also shapes the possibilities of dress. Wealthier groups are better able to purchase expensive clothing that stretches or contradicts official requirements, including loose European-style coats, tight black jeans, and scarves worn in ways that expose sections of hair. Lower- and middle-income groups are more likely to rely on simple manteaus and inexpensive headscarves or to face the risks associated with purchasing imported or smuggled products through unofficial markets.
Since the Revolution, Iran’s fashion and beauty markets have existed in persistent contradiction with official policy. International sanctions and restrictions on the importation of Western brands have meant that cosmetics and clothing are supplied largely through smuggling and informal imports. Nevertheless, the growth of the beauty industry has been remarkable. In 2014, Agence France-Presse reported that Iran was the second-largest beauty market in the region after Saudi Arabia and the seventh-largest in the world. Iranian women were reported to use makeup daily and, on average, to consume approximately one tube of mascara per month, a considerably higher rate than in countries such as France. A limited number of domestic and international companies compete within this market. Although approximately twenty cosmetics companies had official representation in the country, more than sixty per cent of the market was reportedly controlled by smugglers. These figures reveal how, within a system of strict covering rituals, women use the visible face as a primary space through which beauty and individuality can be socially expressed. The streets of Tehran contain billboards advertising rhinoplasty, perfect skin, and flawless teeth. In 2025, Agence France-Presse reported that more than 264,000 cosmetic procedures had been performed in Iran, with rhinoplasty remaining the most common. Iranian models and fashion personalities have stated that these procedures directly affect their self-confidence and employment opportunities. In other words, although girls and women are expected to cover themselves in public, many spend substantial sums in private clinics and beauty salons on rhinoplasty, laser hair removal, weight loss, skin treatments, and eye makeup in order to meet prevailing standards of facial and bodily beauty. It is partly for this reason that Iran has often been described as the “rhinoplasty capital” of the world. Alongside these developments, the clothing market has gradually become more active despite official restrictions. Domestic designers advertise shorter or more visually striking manteaus, colourful headscarves, and semi-formal styles, while social-media platforms—despite filtering and censorship—have become major spaces for exchanging fashion ideas.
Digital media plays a central role in shaping and transforming preferences regarding clothing and appearance. Young Iranians use circumvention tools to access YouTube and Instagram, where they circulate fashion photographs, styling videos, and recordings of protest actions. Even before the uprising following Mahsa Amini’s death, campaigns such as “White Wednesdays” emerged through social media, encouraging women to wear white or green headscarves on designated days and to defend the principle of voluntary hijab. After the events of 2022, thousands of videos showing women protesting in the streets, removing their headscarves, and chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom” were circulated through Telegram, Instagram, and other networks. One of the most famous examples was the “Girl of Revolution Street” in January 2018, when an image of a young woman standing in a Tehran street and raising her white headscarf on a stick was broadcast by satellite channels and inspired hundreds of others to repeat the gesture. Online campaigns have nevertheless been subjected to severe prosecution. Official media have publicized cases involving bloggers and Instagram fashion designers who sold decorative or unconventional headscarves, and a number of them have been imprisoned. At the same time, new local styles of dress have emerged. Young people in Tehran, Tabriz, and other urban centres may place their scarves beneath the chin or toward the back of the head, exposing the hair while attempting to remain technically within the limits of the law. As a result, a substantial part of society is cautiously and gradually rewriting the rules of public appearance. Governmental and parliamentary surveys conducted during the past decade have suggested that close to half of the population believes hijab should not be compulsory, although a significant proportion continues to support it (Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2019).
Within these debates, the experiences of gender-nonconforming people and marginalized ethnic or racialized communities have generally remained at the periphery. Officially, Iran is one of the few Muslim-majority countries in which gender-confirmation surgery is legal under particular conditions and may receive state financial support, following a religious ruling issued by Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1980s. However, people who present or dress outside conventional gender norms without undergoing approved medical procedures have no corresponding legal recognition. Transgender people remain vulnerable to harassment, violence, exclusion from employment, and rejection by their families and communities because of their appearance or identity. Same-sex relations between both women and men are criminalized. Sexual relations between adult men may carry the death penalty under certain provisions, while relations between adult women may be punished by flogging. LGBTQ+ people are therefore frequently forced to conceal their identities and, in some cases, to migrate or seek asylum. Although gender-confirmation surgery is accepted within a tightly controlled medical and religious framework, expressions of non-heterosexual desire and identities that do not conform to official classifications remain subject to legal punishment. The governing system thus distinguishes between transgender identity, when medicalized and categorized through the language of “gender-identity disorder,” and homosexuality, but both groups continue to face profound legal and social discrimination (2015; WikiShia, 2023).
From a historical perspective, the contradictions surrounding women’s clothing in contemporary Iran are rooted in the political experiences of the twentieth century. Under Reza Shah, the chador and headscarf were presented as symbols of national backwardness. Women were compelled to remove their veils, and in some cases the authorities forcibly pulled chadors from their bodies (Nouri, 2013). The 1979 Revolution was partly understood as a rejection of this coercive modernization, but rather than establishing complete freedom of dress, the new government promoted closed clothing and the chador. During the 1980s, a harsh ideological system of compulsory hijab was consolidated, and state institutions associated with the Revolutionary Guards created bodies for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice in order to supervise public appearance. Policies fluctuated during subsequent decades. Under figures such as Mahdavi Kani and Rafsanjani, enforcement occasionally underwent temporary periods of relaxation; under Ahmadinejad, public restrictions were intensified; and Rouhani attempted to create limited openness through promises of cultural moderation and social consensus. Demographic and social transformations have nevertheless reversed many of the assumptions underlying these policies. Women have at times constituted more than sixty per cent of university students, and a large proportion of the population is young. Literacy and women’s participation in higher education have increased dramatically over the past four decades, while conservative religious networks have retained substantial power within the state. The economy is similarly contradictory. Currency crises and international sanctions have reduced formal purchasing power, while state-affiliated and private institutions continue to profit from the clothing and cosmetics trade. Agence France-Presse reported in the spring of 2025 that, while Iran’s minimum wage was equivalent to approximately one hundred US dollars per month, a relatively simple rhinoplasty procedure could cost as much as one thousand dollars. The report concluded that the Iranian beauty industry concentrates heavily on the face because, in public, it is often the only part of a woman’s body that can be openly displayed.
In practice, the lifestyle of urban youth and the demands of the market exert their own pressure on society. A new generation of designers, including Forouzan Abdoli and Naghmeh Kiumarsi, has promoted long, short-sleeved manteaus, narrow trousers, and other garments that reinterpret the limits of legally acceptable clothing. Social media is filled with models wearing thin, colourful headscarves and fashionable manteaus, while young women with design skills use Instagram and platforms such as Clubhouse to introduce original collections. In direct opposition to the government’s attempt to conceal and regulate the body, digital media circulates images of unveiled or partially veiled women and transforms visibility into a field of social competition. Following the killing of Mahsa Amini, thousands of videos showed women moving unveiled through public spaces in carefully styled clothing, demonstrating that the wave of disobedience had not ended. The official market, by contrast, has faced repeated closures. In recent years, Tehran’s police chief has announced the daily closure of numerous clothing shops accused of violating dress regulations (Tehran Police Chief, 2023). Religious rulings have even debated whether men’s sunglasses or watches with decorative straps constitute impermissible forms of adornment. In everyday life, many women carry scarves or other items in their bags and adjust their clothing when they anticipate police inspection. Once the immediate threat of surveillance has passed, they may return to their preferred appearance in quieter streets, private gatherings, or family spaces.
Other parts and dimensions of the body are also subjected to cultural regulation. The market for slimming and physical fitness has grown substantially, and advertisements for gyms, new diets, cosmetic treatments, and pharmaceutical supplements—particularly those directed toward women—generate considerable profit. Women are widely expected to remain thin, and research has identified a strong social desire for bodily fitness and weight control. Excess weight may also acquire political meanings. Some feminist critics, for example, have argued that state campaigns against obesity reproduce the notion that a woman who is fat is socially unproductive or undesirable. Health products and cosmetics are likewise subjected to religious and cultural scrutiny. Perfumes, fragranced products, makeup, and forms of attractive adornment may be deemed objectionable when they are considered likely to attract the attention of unrelated men, according to official religious rulings attributed to Khamenei.
Several striking contradictions characterize these patterns. First, there is an enormous gap between official law and people’s actual behaviour. Despite the government’s promotion of strict hijab, millions of women do not observe the officially sanctioned standard in practice, and forms of minimal or noncompliance have become increasingly normalized since the 2010s. Domestic studies have indicated that approximately half of society regards clothing as a matter of personal choice (Government Survey, 2018). Although the security apparatus attempts to suppress resistance through imprisonment and the deprivation of civil rights, the reduced visibility of direct enforcement in certain parts of Tehran suggests that the state has at times been compelled to modify its methods. Surveillance has increasingly shifted toward cameras, economic penalties, vehicle confiscation, business closures, and technologically mediated forms of control rather than relying exclusively on direct physical confrontation (Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2019; European Center for Justice, 2020). The market also operates in profound contradiction with official ideology. In a society where the promotion of women’s makeup and bodily display is officially condemned, the cosmetics and cosmetic-surgery industries continue to expand. Western luxury brands such as Lancôme have attempted to enter the formal Iranian market, demonstrating international recognition of the scale of domestic demand (AFP, 2014). Technology and globalization have similarly enabled fashion to circulate without state permission. Although the internet and domestic social networks are heavily monitored, the personal use of filtered platforms such as Instagram and Telegram through virtual private networks is extremely widespread and facilitates cultural exchange. International sanctions have increased the price of luxury goods and made the formal importation of fabrics and branded clothing more difficult, while simultaneously strengthening smuggling networks and unofficial markets. Another major contradiction is generational. Younger Iranians tend to demand greater personal freedom and are more willing to reject official lifestyle rules, while many older people continue to express loyalty to traditional values. These divisions appear within individual families: grandparents may speak enthusiastically about hijab, while their grandchildren experiment with makeup and unconventional dress in private.
Gender contradictions are equally intense. The state attempts to reinforce an ideology based on a division between women’s domestic responsibilities and men’s participation in public life, yet women’s employment, education, and demands for equal rights continually challenge this framework. Iranian law formally permits women to study and work within the boundaries of the state’s interpretation of Islamic law, but gender quotas, restrictions on particular fields of study, workplace discrimination, and the manipulation of official statistics have repeatedly limited equality in practice. Two opposing trajectories have therefore emerged. Young people insist upon individual liberty and more open lifestyles, while state institutions resort to legal repression in order to preserve ideological “red lines.” Society has been compelled to live with the violence and exclusion produced by compulsory-hijab enforcement, but a deep social conflict remains visible. Evidence suggests that the regime is using new legislation and more restrictive legal instruments to wage an increasingly comprehensive struggle over women’s bodies, while a substantial section of the population continues to emphasize personal rights and individual choice (Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2023).
The future remains uncertain. In the short term, state pressure on women’s clothing will probably continue through the implementation and revision of new legislation. Nevertheless, the extensive acts of disobedience that have occurred since 2022 demonstrate that cultural transformation cannot easily be stopped. Women imprisoned for their activism have continued to resist compulsory-dress laws and have sent letters to international media affirming their commitment to freedom. The government may therefore prove unable to reshape culture through force and may instead produce new forms of social resistance. Some international analysts argue that the only path out of this crisis is to grant political legitimacy to women’s demands by abolishing compulsory hijab, guaranteeing equal rights, and replacing top-down cultural regulation with genuine legal and social reform. Civil and artistic initiatives also continue within Iran. Movements and organizations campaigning against gender discrimination seek to create a united front among Iranian citizens and human-rights activists, while protest hashtags and videos continue to circulate.
Ultimately, the “frontier of the body” in Iran is the site of a multidimensional conflict. The state imposes restrictive laws and creates supervisory institutions to enforce hijab and regulate sexuality; the official religious-jurisprudential establishment emphasizes the necessity of modesty and compulsory covering; fashion and beauty markets pursue profit and expanded consumer freedom within an inconsistent legal structure; and young people attempt to redefine themselves by combining old and new styles or engaging in civil disobedience. These contradictions have created deep divisions within social relationships and families, while also compelling women to struggle, negotiate, and reflect upon their bodies every day. The continued expansion of digital media and access to information will probably encourage younger generations to challenge state control further, while the government may respond by adopting less visible tactics, including cultural propaganda, technological surveillance, and targeted economic pressure (Iran Human Rights, 2025; Iran, 2026). Under these conditions, the body will remain one of the most important sites of political conflict in Iran.