Documentary: The double life of Iranian women after the veil loves to buy wigs

year 2010. Women are buying wigs in a small mall.

Kiana Hayeri grew up in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Your behavior in public places in this country is limited. In 2005, 17-year-old Hayeri left Iran, went to Toronto, Canada, and studied photography at the local Ryerson University.

Hayeri returned to Iran in 2010 to explore the dual lives of young girls. These girls must dress conservatively in public acts of humility, clothes must cover their hair, arms and legs. But when they got home, they also dated, sang, learned to dance, and even dance like the Canadian friends of Hayeri.

Hayeri, 24, said, "Everything that is banned by the government is actually going on, but it is not in public. Our generation has touched many Western things through satellites and the Internet, and the government can't stop our generation."

Most of the women she photographed came from families whose middle and high class believed in Islam, but some of them did not believe in religion. Some of the women’s parents themselves were conservative in public, but they changed their clothes after returning home.

Hayeri said her project does not represent the whole of Iran, but many young people in Iran's big cities are eager for a relatively loose public life. "This is a world that many Americans have neglected. Now everyone is discussing wars, sanctions and nuclear weapons, and they have forgotten the lives of ordinary Iranians. People are only concerned about the situation of the government."

After the 1980 revolution, the Iranian government incorporated religious restrictions on public conduct into the Iranian legal system and was enforced by the moral police. The women photographed by Hayeri, if they rolled up their sleeves in the public or the veil did not cover their hair, would be stopped and corrected if they were discovered by the moral police.

Hayeri was detained last year because the moral policeman thought that the black tights she wore were too sexy. The police asked her family to take the appropriate clothing for her to change to her, but her close relatives left Iran, so she was detained for some time.

Hayeri's project "The War of Veil" is not just the cover of Iranian women's heads and faces in public places by Hijab (the veil or headscarf worn by Muslim women), but also the cover of their personal lives. Hayeri also studied how these women choose to present themselves in public.

In this set of photos, Hayeri photographed the women's dressing and undressing, before and after makeup. She said that these women have control over their image in public through the choice of materials and makeup of Hijab. “They use different colors and fashion elements to make themselves more dazzling in the crowd. When they wear Hijab and make up their makeup, they are even stronger.”

This topic is very complicated. The degree of shading of women's makeup in public places is also limited. But makeup, in a sense, is actually a "veil" that covers the true face of women. She said, "Iranian culture is all about presenting your own image. Even if you just go shopping at the grocery store, you have to wear the top yarn. So it takes a lot of courage to completely remove the veil."

Although Hayeri is now a Canadian citizen, she is growing on this land in Iran. There are also a lot of Iranians who are younger and more yearning for freedom than her. They also want to make their life in line with the top yarn and the yarn. “These talents are the main force in breaking the tradition in all aspects of life.”