Fashion - Zahed Article Review

Zahed discusses many major point that revolve around the social and political ideology of the veil and a females head hair. Zahed breaks his article down into different sections and first discusses the connection between gender and the ideology in Iran. He then goes on to inform the readers about the importance of a womans hair and why it needs to be covered. According to the Iranian society a females head hair is a symbol of sexuality, of the woman's appeal and had a certain power over men. Zahed discusses how the veil became apart of this Iranian society. It seems to have traveled through different centuries and has had different meanings in different societies and religions.The idea of the veil was to control the females sexual power and the male gaze. The Iranian women have gone through plenty of struggles with the different regimes that were being enforced back and fourth. It was a constant battle for the female identity created by society and their own identity, between being unveiled and wearing the veil. At the end of this article he expresses the idea that the ideology of concealing the female head hair tells society more about a mans sexual anxiety than the seductive power of women.

Steven Millhauser’s fictional story relates to Zahed’s article in a simple way. It seems as though he would like women to follow the regime that forced women to wear the veil. He believes that the concept of women concealing their bodies is the new way of revealing their attractiveness. He discusses a fictional world where women wanted to cover up and had no problem in doing so and wore loose fitting clothing. This connects to the idea of the regime wanting to get rid of the Western fashion that was corrupting the Iranian women.