Untangling the politics of hair

On the 22nd of September 2022, Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by Iran’s morality police because a loose tendril of hair escaped her hijab. As protestors took to the streets across Iran, security forces came down heavily on them - resulting in over 5000 deaths and over 19000 arrests. Governments around the world issued statement after statement condemning this horrific repression. India was silent.

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While politicians from the world's largest democracy said nothing and people of India treated it as “internal matters of another country”. Stir, a disruptive magazine wanted to wake up the collective consciousness of a nation. A provocative photo essay was published showcasing the ‘Every Woman’ – stripped to the bone, stripped of geography, ethnicity, and religion, bound by her own hair, subjugated, and controlled by the patriarchy. We gave Mahsa Amini’s plight universal appeal because the truth is that it wasn’t just Iran’s story, but the story of every woman.