Iran’s Youth Subculture

Published April 25, 2007
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By Farzin Mojtabai

In the summer of 2000, I traveled to my native country of Iran for the first time. I will never forget the culture shock that I felt stepping into this other world. I saw children living in extreme poverty and women draped in black cloth from head to toe in scorching 100-degree weather.

But behind the headscarves and strict Islamic social codes, a political movement is underway.

That same summer, college students were beaten, lashed and tossed from dorm balconies for peacefully protesting harsh government policies. After police crushed the protests, I could feel the glass from the shattered dorm windows beneath my feet as I walked through the busy streets of Tehran.

These students were sacrificing their lives to preserve their livelihoods and dying for basic human rights that had eluded them for so long, deciding it better to die on their own terms rather than live on someone else’s.

These youth protests in 2000 foreshadowed the new youth movement that today is in constant struggle with the traditional Islamic government.

This battle is evident in every aspect of every day life. Even a strand of hair slipping through the headscarf of an Iranian woman is a political statement symbolizing the struggle for young Iranians to break free of this oppressive political climate in which they currently subsist.

Iran has one of the youngest populations in the world, and the youth are dissatisfied with the social restrictions they suffer at the hands of an oppressive government.

Young men and women gather in secret underground parks where drug dealers do business and the sexes intermingle. Certain streets in Tehran are unofficially designated as places for the youth to secretly exchange numbers and establish relationships that they hide from parents, relatives, co-workers, and the outside world.

Many Iranians smuggle illegal satellite dishes into their homes to beam images of American pop culture at great risk and expense. This is prevalent in the most affluent areas of Tehran where youth often make political statements just by living their everyday lives.

All of my young cousins constantly vent their frustrations, asking me, “What does it feel like to live in paradise?” They criticize what they perceive as Iran’s socially restrictive, authoritarian regime. I tried to inform them that American culture is not perfect and not what it is perceived to be on the outside.

Behind the veil of Islamic government lies a youth population that wants to express themselves much the same way youth on American college campuses do. My cousins have been lashed for holding hands with girls in public or alcohol violations; both are risks Iranian youth take while trying to emulate more liberal cultures.

Although on the outside Iran can be viewed as a strict religious country, my time there revealed to me another side of Iran that demonstrated just how similar Iranian youth are to their counterparts in the western world.

Iran is in the middle of a political battle raging between the unelected oppressive government and its citizens. While in Iran, I saw a country whose people have so much pride in who they are but are upset by how they are perceived to be. Iranians are trying to change their ultra conservative Islamic identity and strive to be identified as a country moving towards a more secular democracy.

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