New Criticals


 

In December 2009, hundreds of men in Iran voluntarily donned hijabs in protest of the arrest of leading Iranian student activist Majid Tavakoli; the hijabs were worn in response to an Iranian news agency’s slandering publication of an image of the activist in a headscarf juxtaposed on screen with an image of former President Banisadre, whom officials had accused of escaping the country in veiled female disguise in 1981 [12]. In this way, the protestors’ reappropriation of the shame of men in chadors reversed the insult through a visual collective of embodied, performed support and empathy, exploiting in a way the visibility of the veil (while deemphasizing its sexual energy, perhaps a product of the naturalized privilege of men to exist as idealized, unmarked universal subjects, rather than over-determined, sexualized bodies).