Of Chests and Chadors, Part 2

Brett Favre's retirement delayed this follow-up a bit (and I'm not through with that subject either), so do look back at Part 1 if you need a reminder of how one's love of sports can be debased by shameless self-promotion. That covers the "chests" element.

Now onto chadors. For a loftier take on devotion, let's turn our attention to Iran. Not for the nuclear program and everything else disturbing that dominates news about that country, but for its female athletes and fans.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, women have been banned from soccer—aka football—stadiums in Iran for various absurd reasons provided by the clerics, e.g. rowdy male fans make for an unsafe environment for women. (As a woman who's had her nose broken by a rowdy male fan at a football game right here in the U.S. of A. and keeps going to stadiums anyway, I find that rationale particularly laughable. Oh it was an accident, not a brawl as we were both rooting for the Jets over the Patriots—else it may well have been intentional.) No wives, no sisters, no children, no nothing. After all, we wouldn't want them to see men's exposed legs, or worse still, start thinking that somehow they should share equal rights with men on matters beyond innocuous recreation as well.

But, as my lyrical idol Leonard Cohen says, there is a crack in everything. In June 2005, an interesting exception came to pass, though it garnered little international attention, and no American attention as far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong). After intensely lobbying the Iranian Football Federation, a group of Iranian women were able to attend a World Cup qualifier played against North Korea in Tehran's Azadi Stadium. (By the way, Azadi means "freedom," which reminds me to look up "irony" in my Persian dictionary). This particular crack, however was quickly filled in: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a surprise move considering his general political stance, attempted to lift the ban on women's attendance at games in April 2006, but was immediately overruled by the clerics.

Forgive the broad sweeping generalization, but I suspect we all agree that women don't relent easily. Right around the time of the reinforced ban, the national women's football team managed to pull off a match against a club team from Berlin, BSV Al-Dersimspor. Men were not permitted, and regardless the players had to wear what appears to be a rather restricting get-up for athletes (see photo). But the match took place in an outdoor venue, instead of the usual confinement to indoor arenas, and was the first ever against a foreign opponent. Another crack, and one that the women perceived as a solid step away from second class citizenship.

This time it was even the subject of a documentary, "Football Under Cover," co-directed by Iranian Ayat Najafi and David Assmann of Germany. (The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last month, and will open in Germany in April, but unfortunately it's not currently scheduled for release elsewhere.) The male filmmakers had to "direct" from outside the stadium, and only received permission to make the film if they agreed never to show it in Iran. In one scene, the crowd chants, "We women have only half our rights." Alas, another setback followed, when a friendly set to take place between the two teams in Berlin a year later was canceled by Iran, for "technical reasons." And like that, the hoped-for cultural exchange was quashed.

One does hear reports from visitors and even members of the press that there's a small yet surprising amount of laxity surrounding certain cultural liberties—bringing Western magazines or videos into the country, bending the rules of women's dress codes with long but fitted smocks etc. And given the popularity of football in Iran, it seems like an appropriate means by which to gradually break down restrictions and build some momentum for the female cause. As filmmaker Najafi declared in no uncertain terms at the premiere in Berlin, "Women's football in Iran represents a battle for freedom." Some people may say it's a stretch to suggest that sports can make an impact on such a grandiose scale, but history has proven them wrong on so many occasions (Muhammad Ali's conscientious objection, Jesse Owens' four gold medals in 1936, Steven Spielberg's recent withdrawal from involvement in the Beijing Olympics, to name a few). And frankly, I'm just not interested in their cynicism.