PARIS –
Oscar-winning actors Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche, in addition to different French display screen and music stars, filmed themselves chopping off locks of their hair in a video posted Wednesday in help of protesters in Iran.
“For freedom,” Binoche mentioned as she hacked a big handful of hair off the highest of her head with a pair of scissors, earlier than brandishing it in entrance of the digicam.
The video, hashtagged HairForFreedom, comes with Iran engulfed by anti-government protests. They had been sparked by the dying of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict costume code.
Among the Iranian demonstrators have publicly hacked off locks of hair on the protests, and the gesture has unfold.
Pictures of ladies elsewhere reducing their hair to indicate solidarity with Iranian ladies have gone viral — from Turkish singer Melek Mosso on stage final week, to ladies in Lebanon and Syria, to Swedish lawmaker Abir Al-Sahlani within the halls of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday. A museum in Rome is amassing locks of hair to current to the Iranian Embassy.
“For girls to chop their hair in Iran is a type of protest … an emblem to face towards the obligatory hijab,” mentioned Dorna Javan, an Iranian political scientist primarily based in France and specialised in Iran. Such a visible gesture is a method for girls the world over to rally across the Iranian ladies’s plight, she added.
The video of Cotillard, Binoche and dozens of different ladies reducing off locks of their hair was launched on an Instagram account, “soutienfemmesiran” — which interprets as “help ladies in Iran.”
“These ladies, these males are asking for our help. Their braveness and their dignity obliges us,” mentioned a submit with the video.
“We’ve determined to answer the attraction made to us by reducing — us too — a few of these locks.”
Among the different ladies who took half included actors Charlotte Rampling and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who was additionally filmed reducing off a lock of hair from the pinnacle of her mom, singer Jane Birkin.
This extremely symbolic gesture additionally echoes Iranian historical past and folklore wherein for girls to cut their hair is an indication of protest. The Shahnameh (“The E-book of Kings”), a nationwide epic of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010 A.D., refers to a princess chopping her hair to protest towards the dying of her husband seen as unfair.
“Girls reducing their hair is an historical Persian custom additionally discovered within the Shahnameh, when the fury is stronger than the facility of the oppressor,” tweeted Shara Atashi, an Iranian author primarily based in Wales.
Researcher Javan described it as a “benevolent gesture,” and known as for extra sturdy political motion from the worldwide neighborhood to help Iranian protesters.
“We won’t scale back the battle of Iranian ladies for his or her rights — which dates again to the second half of the nineteenth century — to the gesture of reducing their hair,” she mentioned. “However these viral movies are a approach to give a world influence to their battle.”