Firsthand reports from contributors inside Iran
Last week I took my teenage niece to a concert at Tehran’s iconic Vahdat Hall, where two large portraits hang high on stage walls, watching over the audience. “What’s the Islamic Republic doing here,” my niece joked.
The portraits, to be clear, are those of Iran’s current and former supreme leaders. I’m leaving out their names because to my niece, they are one and the same. Not just them, but all the turbaned guys. And not just to her, but to most in her generation.
We, the so-called Millennials, fought the Islamic Republic. Iran’s Generation Z has disentangled itself from it. It has no time for it, lives in a parallel reality almost, detached from all that the state stands for and promotes.
A few weeks ago, a short video went viral of young girls struggling to name the Islamic Republic’s late and living leadership by their image.
The video was clipped from an apparently state-commissioned documentary aiming to illustrate the corrupting effects of so-called cultural invasion and rally those who care about revolutionary values.
Only, it did the exact opposite.
The image of teenagers giggling as they fail to identify the leaders underscored the proposition, often dismissed as wishful rhetoric, that the aging Islamic Republic will not survive the spice and sass of Iran’s generation Z.
The documentary, whatever its aim, showcased the profound disconnect between Iran’s rulers and its youth. What it also showed was how effortlessly cool the latter are about it.
“We cannot care less,” the girls’ body language seemed to say. “We really don’t,” my niece confirms this when I put this idea to her.
For those of us who grew up in the early years of the Islamic Republic, the contrast is striking. Not only did we know—and fear—our rulers, but we chanted and prayed for their health every morning at school.
We were steeped in propaganda, with little exposure to the outside world. The state broadcaster was the only show in town. Today, most homes have satellite TV, even though it’s illegal. And most teenagers are on social media, even though many platforms are filtered.
This access to all that’s out there has transformed Iran from within and below, even if the shell and the top remain the same. In her attitude toward religion and authority, my niece has much more in common with a teenager in the United States than she has with her mother.
I have a home video of my older brother’s birthday party from the mid-1980s, discovered in a house move and digitized a few years ago. Uncles, aunties and cousins dance to an Iranian pop song.
As they move about, a framed picture on a shelf at the other end of the room emerges and vanishes behind them: an A4 print of Iran’s then supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.
The contrast boggles the mind today. But at the time it was all but typical. A time when millions had a portrait of this or that cleric at home, when respect and affection for the turbaned guys was still there—waning, of course, as men in uniform stormed houses and arrested partying aunties and uncles.
Over the years, injustice and repression eroded affection and erased all such individual displays of respect. The leaders’ images are still ubiquitous, but only in public and only sponsored by the state.
My niece and her friends have never really looked at these images. They do not examine Khomeini’s face on banknotes the way we once did, trying to find the fox that was said to have been hidden in his beard by the cheeky designer.
“You must be kidding me,” my niece told me when she caught me watching a presidential debate on state-TV last summer. “Who gives a crap about elections?”
A few words later, I learned she did not even know how many were running, let alone their names.
Unlike my generation, who believed in change through the ballot box, whose priority was politics and the collective, my niece’s generation is concerned with the individual: my hair, my rights, my aspirations.
The apathy with politics and the focus on self runs deeper and broader than the teenage folk, of course. But theirs is more natural, unforced—organic perhaps. And our generation can take some credit for that.
My sister is not my mother. Her daughter, my niece, has been hearing her swearing at Iran’s officials since she was a fetus. She has not been forced by my sister to “beware and behave.” She has not been scolded for getting a low grade in Religion at school.
My sister and I were suppressed both by the state and by our parents’ fear of the state. My niece has grown up with parents not just disillusioned by but vocal against the state. Little surprise then that she is bolder almost to the point of brashness.
“What does it have to do with my mom or her mom or their dear God,” my niece says when I meekly suggest that my sister may be uncomfortable with her outfit. “It’s not like I’m asking her to dress like this, is it?”
The near-intrinsic boldness at home has left its mark on the streets as well. Just look at the leading role teenagers played in Iran’s 2022 uprising. They fought harder than their parents, not over censorship or election fraud, but for their right to live.
It was a collective of struggles for the individual. And it triumphed in the sense that it normalized uncovered hair, the very thing that had a young woman killed, sparking the widespread protest aptly called the Woman Life Freedom movement.
So our turbaned leaders may still be watching over my niece. But they’re as relevant to her life as their framed pictures are to the music that fills the concert hall she entered for the first time with me.
I still do tell her about the fights of my generation, our campaign, for instance, to gather a million signatures demanding an end to discrimination against women in Iran. She nods approvingly but you can tell she’s unimpressed.
“Why bother shouting 'leave me alone' when you can just walk away,” she lectures me. Like many of her ilk, she appears to have stopped worrying about freedom and just lives it.
Over the past two decades, Valentine’s Day has grown increasingly popular in Iran, frustrating authorities who have spent nearly half a century trying to Islamicize society and shield young people from Western cultural influences.
In 2010, Iran’s police and judicial authorities condemned Valentine’s Day celebrations as part of a “Western cultural onslaught”, imposing a ban on businesses selling Valentine’s Day gifts and decorations.
Since then, police have occasionally cracked down on shops selling gifts and cafés hosting Valentine’s celebrations, where young people gather with red balloons, roses, teddy bears, and other tokens of affection. Despite these efforts, Valentine’s Day has continued to gain popularity, even spreading to religious cities such as Qom and Mashhad, home to two of Shiism’s most important shrines and seminaries.
A call to revive Sepandarmazgan
Beyond government opposition, some Iranians also criticize the growing influence of Western holidays, advocating for the revival of ancient Iranian festivals instead. They argue that Sepandarmazgan, or Espandgan for short, offers a more culturally authentic alternative to Valentine’s Day.
Falling on February 23 this year, Sepandarmazgan is dedicated to Sepandarmaz (Holy Devotion), one of the seven divine entities emanating from Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian creator god.
In ancient Iranian tradition, Sepandarmaz was revered as a feminine divine force linked to the Earth and women, symbolizing fertility and prosperity. Unlike Anahita—an earlier goddess of love, fertility, and water whose worship was later absorbed into Zoroastrianism—Sepandarmaz was never portrayed in human form in ancient artifacts.
Sending text messages and giving gifts to loved ones on Espandgan instead of Valentine's Day has been gaining popularity in recent years.
According to a recent article published by the Student News Network, a hardline news outlet, presenting Espandgan as an alternative to Valentine’s Day fails to prevent the spread of Western cultural values. Instead, it merely repackages the same concepts in a form that contradicts the Islamic way of life.
Espandgan in history and modern Zoroastrianism
Iran’s Zoroastrian community, though now small, continues to celebrate Espandgan with solemn religious rituals and prayers, including recitations from the Avesta—their holy book—at fire temples and sacred shrines, such as Pir-e Sabz in Yazd.
According to the 11th-century historian Al-Biruni, however, Espandgan was widely observed in parts of Iran as a day honoring women. On this occasion, women were exempt from housework, and men showered their wives with gifts. Additionally, women freely expressed their love to the men they wished to marry, a tradition that resonates with modern romantic celebrations.
Government opposition to pre-Islamic traditions
Despite the historical significance of Espandgan, Iran’s religious and political establishment remains resistant to promoting pre-Islamic festivals as substitutes for Western celebrations like Valentine’s Day and Christmas—both of which remain widely celebrated despite official disapproval.
In recent years the celebration of Christmas has also become very popular in Iran.
Beyond Valentine's Day, the hardline religious and political establishment also opposes other ancient festivals including the Winter Solstice festival of Yalda (or Shab-e Chelleh) which marks the longest night of the year, and Charshanbeh Soori, a bonfire festival held on the evening of the last Tuesday before the Iranian New Year (Nowrouz) as relics of paganism.
Charshanbeh Soori often turns into a battle between the merry-making youth who celebrate it on the streets and the police, Basij militia of the Revolutionary Guards, and vigilante groups who crack down on them in larger cities such as Tehran.
In an attempt to counter pre-Islamic traditions and calendar events, authorities have sought to elevate Islamic occasions, designating the birthday of Fatima, daughter of Prophet Muhammad, as Women’s Day. The birthday of Imam Ali, the first Shiite Imam, has similarly been designated as Men’s Day while the anniversary of Fatima and Ali’s marriage has been added to the official calendar as Marriage Day.
Anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are not approved by Iran’s health regulators but that does not seem to bother those who seek and afford this newfound status symbol.
“Have a quick scroll through Instagram and you’ll see scores of Ozempic posts,” says Fatemeh, a psychotherapist in Tehran over a call on an encrypted messaging app. “You may see the medical pen flaunted alongside a Givenchy or a Louis Vuitton.”
For many, Ozempic is as much about status as it is about fitness, she says, adding that it’s not all too rare to happen upon someone live streaming their injection of Mounjaro to showcase their apparent weight-loss journeys.
The longing for a slimmer physique is nothing new. But the anti-obesity injections, often called a Fitness Wand, are also highly coveted in Iran not in spite of but because of their high cost.
On Instagram and Telegram, platforms with the most users in Iran, instructional videos are mushrooming on Ozempic and other weight-loss medications, with more physicians and clinics offering tips on how to use those, how to get the best results, and of course, how to tell apart the original and the fake ones.
“For many of our clients, these weight-loss pens are seen as tools to regain self-confidence,” says Maryam Majd, a 42-year-old fitness trainer at a high-end gym in Tehran’s affluent Zaferaniyeh district.
“Our gym staff is trained to assist with using these products, and we’ve even set up a dedicated room next to the solarium for this purpose,” she adds.
The urge to follow western trends may be explained, partly at least, by Iran’s official isolation from the world. But there’s little doubt that Iranians tend to be trigger happy when it comes to invasive methods of uplifting their appearance.
Take the wave of rhinoplasty (or nose jobs) that came to Iran’s shores a couple of decades ago and has left very few nostrils intact. Then it was liposuction, then Botox.
Every time it starts with the well-off and spreads to others, first as a luxury then a necessity, an obsession almost, which compels people with not enough disposable income to cut their expenses elsewhere, give up their basic needs even, to afford it.
Ozempic and other pens appear to be following a similar trajectory.
All this comes as many Iranians have to visit multiple pharmacies and queue up for hours to get life-saving medication for their loved ones.
Iran’s ongoing economic troubles—driven by sanctions, corruption and government mismanagement—has led to chronic shortages of essential drugs. Three in ten Iranians are now unable to afford their medication due to the soaring prices.
It does not help that some black market dealers, drawn by the substantial profit margins, have shifted their focus from rare disease medications to high-demand weight-loss drugs.
As the global trend of weight-loss medications continues to gain traction, Ozempic and similar drugs have become yet another example of Iran’s widening gap—between those constantly chasing the latest status symbol and those struggling to meet their basic needs.