Persepolis Veil

The novel The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi depicts the struggles within Iran from a female point of view before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution. This graphic novel allows the reader to gain insight of the lifestyle in Iran, and the effects on the people due to the Islamic Regime. During this period of time in Iran, serious hardships fell upon the citizens, in which the people live their lives in the shadows, so that they wouldn’t endanger the people they love. Women in Iran are thus held to a standard in public by the government, in which the veil, a requirement for the women of the Iranian society. Through the different ways that veil is incorporated into the novel, Satrapi is able to portray the values of the enforcements

Since the birth of the revolution, reforms were put into place, including that of implementing the veil into the daily lives of women (3/3). It is then in 1980 when “it becomes obligatory to wear the veil at school,” and girls “find themselves veiled and separated from their guy friends” (3/4), (4/6). The veil can be viewed as an oppression of freedom, in which the women are not allowed to express themselves as they should be able to. For example, “Everywhere in the streets there were demonstrations against the veil,” in which the image depicts women wearing the veil and chanting “the veil,” while the other women in the other half of the picture are not wearing the veil and shouting “freedom” (5/1). This emphasis of the veil plays a significant role in the lives of everyday women in Iran, in which their freedoms are stripped by the harassment of the other traditionalist women and men in society. With the veil in the Iranian society, women are more susceptible to being affected by the lack of civil rights, as well as the excesses of traditionalists within

Liberties outside of Iran are especially different to a person who has never known anything but a specific type of culture. For example, on her way back to her friend’s house from the airport in Austria, Satrapi thinks, “What a traitor! While people were dying in our country, she was talking to me about trivial things” (156/7). From this we are able to see how the regime brainwashed Satrapi into thinking a specific way, especially because of the veil. When always necessary to wear the veil in public, she must adapt to life without the veil in order to function in a society where one can be free. As seen during her time at the school in Vienna, she took “some trims off the left and right,” “coated her hair with gel,” “added a thick line of eyeliner,” “and a few safety pins that were replaced by a scarf to soften the look” (190/1-8). By doing these few things, she has already done something that would never have been even allowed in public under the rule of the regime, including being able to wear makeup and short hair. Those were seen to be as “rebellious actions against the regime.” Yet even though she seemed to have changed into a modern western woman, when her boyfriend, Enrique, told her about a revolutionary party, it “reminded her of the commitment and the battles of her childhood,” in which they would dress up as leaders to “take over