French Actors Snip Their Hair in Solidarity With Iranian Women
French celebs like Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, and others chopped their locks in the name of women’s liberation. But it all feels a bit performative.
CelebritiesNews
Since 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of Iran’s morality police for “incorrectly” wearing her hijab, protests have swept across the world, with women everywhere cutting their hair and burning their hijabs in solidarity. Inside Iran, demonstrations continue into their fourth week, where they’ve grown larger, angrier, and deadlier. The Norway-based human rights organization Iran Human Rights estimates that security forces have killed at least 154 people, including dozens of young women and nine children since the protests began. It’s one of the most powerful feminist movements in recent memory, with no signs of slowing down. And it seems like French women—who have historically been pretty mum about bans on religious face coverings in their own country—want in on the attention solidarity too.
In a widely circulated Instagram video labeled #HairForFreedom, 53 French actors and musicians, including big-name celebrities like Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, and Isabelle Huppert, carefully snipped off some locks—anywhere from a small fistful of hair to a lone lock—in solidarity with Amini and Iranian women in general. Their clips are interspersed with white text on a black background explaining what happened to Amini, all while a solemn French tune plays. But the video lands with the same shallow gravitas of the peak-cringe “Imagine” video that Hollywood’s biggest dropped during the 2020 lockdown. If there’s one thing actors are bad at, it’s reading the goddamn room.