Media is too big
VIEW IN TELEGRAM
Paniz is seventeen. She dreamed of studying interior design in high school, but because the program wasn’t offered in her hometown, she enrolled in a vocational high school and studied accounting instead. Starting in seventh grade, she worked at a hair salon alongside her studies, learning keratin hair treatments to help ease her mother’s financial burden. After escaping domestic violence, her mother had been left to raise the family on her own.
After six years, Paniz cut off the hair that had grown to her waist and sold it to a hair broker through Divar, an online classifieds platform in Iran, for 30 million tomans (approximately $150 at the average exchange rate over the past six months). Her mother was saddened by the decision, and Paniz, heartbroken that she had been unable to make her happy, moved from one sorrow to another.
Her classmates saw her beauty as something lost. Before they recognized her courage in fighting to survive, or her resourcefulness in turning her hair into a means of survival, they noticed only its absence. It was as though the world mourned the loss of a girl’s conventional beauty before acknowledging what she had sacrificed simply to get by.
Paniz says:
“When the broker placed the first pair of scissors near the roots of my hair, the tears began to fall uncontrollably. I wish I could cut away helplessness, too, and throw it aside.
But hair grows back. So do we.
I will keep standing until the day women whose dreams have been stolen are free, girls who have been left without support are safe, and children are no longer forced to carry life’s burdens before their time. I will keep standing so that no girl like me is denied her final exams because of a coat of nail polish or a few strands of hair showing beneath her headscarf.
My hair will grow back. We will bloom again. We will not sell our dreams. No pair of scissors has the right to cut away our hopes for freedom and justice.”
All seventeen-year-old Paniz dreams of is a safe roof over her head: a home of her own, where fear does not dictate daily life and peace is not an unattainable dream. A place where safety is an unconditional right.
Written and compiled by Dr. Saba Vasefi
@iranhrdc
#ThroughHerEyes
#InternationalDayOfTheGirl
#DayOfTheGirl
#HumanRights
#GirlsRights
#IranianGirls
After six years, Paniz cut off the hair that had grown to her waist and sold it to a hair broker through Divar, an online classifieds platform in Iran, for 30 million tomans (approximately $150 at the average exchange rate over the past six months). Her mother was saddened by the decision, and Paniz, heartbroken that she had been unable to make her happy, moved from one sorrow to another.
Her classmates saw her beauty as something lost. Before they recognized her courage in fighting to survive, or her resourcefulness in turning her hair into a means of survival, they noticed only its absence. It was as though the world mourned the loss of a girl’s conventional beauty before acknowledging what she had sacrificed simply to get by.
Paniz says:
“When the broker placed the first pair of scissors near the roots of my hair, the tears began to fall uncontrollably. I wish I could cut away helplessness, too, and throw it aside.
But hair grows back. So do we.
I will keep standing until the day women whose dreams have been stolen are free, girls who have been left without support are safe, and children are no longer forced to carry life’s burdens before their time. I will keep standing so that no girl like me is denied her final exams because of a coat of nail polish or a few strands of hair showing beneath her headscarf.
My hair will grow back. We will bloom again. We will not sell our dreams. No pair of scissors has the right to cut away our hopes for freedom and justice.”
All seventeen-year-old Paniz dreams of is a safe roof over her head: a home of her own, where fear does not dictate daily life and peace is not an unattainable dream. A place where safety is an unconditional right.
Written and compiled by Dr. Saba Vasefi
@iranhrdc
#ThroughHerEyes
#InternationalDayOfTheGirl
#DayOfTheGirl
#HumanRights
#GirlsRights
#IranianGirls