Breaking taboo, Iranian woman dances in public without headscarf
Anonymous young woman in online video defies country's conservatives; Internet applauds audacity.
A video uploaded Wednesday on YouTube shows a young Iranian woman dancing in the Tehran subway, strutting daringly in front of passengers with her hair uncovered.
In the video, which has been viewed almost a million times, the woman - who isn't wearing the mandatory headscarf - is the subject of passengers' looks as she dances. Worse than the uncovered head is the fact that she's dancing in public, an act that is strictly forbidden.
The video was posted on an Iranian Facebook page called "My Stealthy Freedom", where women from the conservative nation upload their photos and videos of themselves without a hijab making symbolic protests.
The lyrics to the song "Salute" that accompanies the dance urges women all over the world to speak up: " Listen up, we're looking for recruits/If you're with me, let me see your hands/Stand up and salute".
According the BBC, one of the women in the subway car can he heard asking disdainfully, "Is this a new trend?" But the response on Facebook was enthusiastic. "It's not because she's dancing, but the fact that she broke a taboo that should be lauded," one viewer commented.
Iranian authorities do not look lightly upon such challenges. In May, a video of Iranian youths dancing, which included headscarf-free women dancing in the streets, went viral. They were arrested.
Since Hassan Rouhani was elected president, Iranians have returned questions of liberty and women's rights to the public discourse – problems that went unacknowledged under the rule of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rouhani, considered relatively moderate, supports the expansion of cultural and social liberties in the Islamic Republic, and has asked police to show more restraint towards women without headscarves.
But the country's conservatives continue to condemn anything they see as a relaxation by authorities in the enforcement of laws targeting women
