Iran's ban on mullets: Silly, but not funny

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Troy Reimink | The Grand Rapids Press

ReutersIran's government has published a list of guidelines for men's hairstyles. Mullets are out.

When news came last week that Iran had banned mullets, the jokes practically wrote themselves ...

At last, cultures uniting in opposition to a Satanic hairstyle. If revealing clothing on women causes earthquakes, men sporting the Wisconsin waterfall are responsible for, what, tornadoes? MacGuyver will have to defuse bombs elsewhere. And so on.

The country's restrictions on women's dress are well-known. Now, Iran's leadership is tackling men's grooming. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued new guidelines about what is permissible.

Unacceptable: Ponytails, Mohawks, spiked hair, other "decadent" hairdos. Acceptable: Short, neat haircuts. If so desired, a little bit of gel. Citizens in violation of the hairstyle rules will receive unflattering cuts as punishment and eventually fines.

Silly? Yeah, but the context is, of course, a history of civilian oppression. A BBC report outlined the relationship between expressive haircuts and repressive governments:

They are clearly intended as an unspoken act of rebellion against a government that bans many of the pleasures young people enjoy, including public displays of affection or Western pop music.
The mullet itself is as old as civilization and is definitely not, as Iran's mullahs claim, a style of "Western" origin. Its ubiquity in the 1980s led to the inevitable backlash and perhaps equally inevitable hipster revival.

Arguing that the mullet ban is good for the world and, potentially, U.S.-Iranian relations, a Canadian columnist facetiously suggests Iran's cultural ministers ought next to focus their attention on the Bieber.

Anyway, all the joking about the sudden good taste of theocratic clerics isn't really funny when you start connecting the dots between crackdowns on haircuts and what else goes on in Iran, the still-unfolding story of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani being a prominent recent example.

As the Boston Globe notes in an editorial:

(A)fter the chuckles fade, the new rules highlight the arbitrary -- and oftentimes brutal -- tactics that the Iranian regime employs to control its citizens. The hair dictate may be silly, but it demonstrates the government's determination to smother the personal liberties of its otherwise diverse and vibrant populace.
The people of Iran deserve a democracy in which they can express themselves however they like. The protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential election have largely died down and, unfortunately, failed to change much within the country. Hopefully, those protesters will find some way to rekindle their energy, anger, and unity to change Iran from within -- no matter if they are sporting mullets or not.

In other words, what might be good for Planet Earth is more bad news for the people of Iran.

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