"Nima tells me we don't understand the difficulty men face here," said Manna with a hint of sarcasm. "They too don't know how to act. Sometimes they act like macho bullies because they feel vulnerable."
"Well, that's to an extent true," I said. "After all, it takes two to create a relationship, and when you make half the population invisible, the other half suffers as well."
"Can you imagine the kind of man who'd get sexually provoked just by looking at a strand of my hair?" said Nassrin. "Someone who goes crazy at the sight of a woman's toe. . .wow!" she contined, "My toe is a lethal weapon!"
--Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
This is the book that made my mother think about streaking her hair with pink. And yes, I am planning on purple hair sometime, and is one of the reasons why I like wearing very bright, somewhat unusual clothes and large dangly earrings. Because I am free- because I can choose how to look. Because I do not have to be invisible.
Because I do not have to meet in secret, with fear of imprisonment or death, just so that I may talk about Mark Twain and Chesterton. Freedom is one of the most wonderful gifts in the world, a gift that is a right. A right that is ignored and taken away from people daily all around the world. A right that is being taken away slowly in America now.
I only pray that somehow, my reading, my Faith, my writing, can by my lethal weapon. Just in case- I have my pink socks.
Purple hair? Oh no, Laura . . .
ReplyDeleteI liked (and agreed with) your musings on this piece, though I have personally neither read this book before nor heard of it.
Don't worry, it'd be light. And probably only temporary. I wanna see what it looks like. :) You should read this book, I think it's very worth-while. It's not my usual style of reading, but very thought-provoking and interesting anyways.
ReplyDelete~Linden