French Actors Snip Their Hair in Solidarity With Iranian Women

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.

The account that posted the video, @soutienfemmesiran, which translates to “Support Women in Iran,” was created by a trio of French lawyers wanting to get involved in the cause. The snips of hair are meant to symbolize the locks of hair that fell out of Amini’s hijab. And while these fallen locks do hold a particular reverence in some contexts—say, protests on the streets—cutting off a whopping two centimeters of your hair in the comfort of your own home feels a bit…opportunistic?

“These people only hope for access to the most essential freedoms,” the video’s caption reads. “These women, these men, ask for our support. Their courage and their dignity compel us. We thus decided to answer the call which was launched to us by cutting […] some of [our] locks.” But more than anything, the #HairFor Freedom video feels like it’s decentering the Iranian and Kurdish people at the heart of this movement and giving privileged French actors a reason to pat themselves on the back (or to run to the nearest hair salon) while not doing anything to address practically identical issues in their own country. At this point, I think I’d prefer some sort of glitzy Instagram infographic over this. Surely women’s liberation is worth a little bit more than sprucing up your dead ends.

Social media users were quick to point out how out of touch the demonstration feels. “All love and respect for the women of Iran standing up to a state that restricts their bodily autonomy,” one Twitter user began, “[But] it’s a little hard to swallow support from French actors who have nothing to say about the niqab ban in their own country, also a restriction on women’s bodily autonomy.”

Another Twitter user also pointed to the performativity of the video, pushing the actors to take more concrete actions: “[They’re giving] themselves visibility, they don’t talk about the uprisings on the spot, we only see them and that doesn’t help them at all concretely. They could have created a fundraiser or given visibility to those concerned.”

However hollow the original video may ring, it has taken traction in some places that do command attention, like the EU parliament floor. On Tuesday, Iraqi-born Swedish parliament member Abir Al-Sahlani ended an EU assembly speech by cutting off her ponytail while saying, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi,” which is Kurdish for “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

While we are all about celebrities using their massive platforms to bring attention to injustice, France certainly has its own issues with Muslim women’s headwear. We’d love to see their activism at times when it’s not so en vogue to participate.