The TikTok is only 45 seconds long and the young woman in it, TikTok user @lunafairy.ir, doesn’t say a word. The silence invigorates the decisive sound of scissors cutting into her thick hair.
“Please bring the voice of the Iranian people to the world,” her caption reads. The hashtag is “#mahsaamini.”
In another TikTok, a woman who wears a black hijab grips a pair of pink scissors, then cuts off a piece of the cloth that hangs over her shoulder, section by section. “Today exactly two years ago, I started wearing hijab,” @persianziba wrote in the caption. “Today, I cut my hair for #mahsaamini.”
Users in Iran and around the world have been cutting their hair or hijabs on the platform in a radical act of autonomy that 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was denied. On September 13, Iran’s “morality police” — a force that terrorizes citizens (mostly women) for what they determine is a refusal to comply with Iran’s strict dress code, particularly the mandatory hijab — arrested Amini for not wearing her hijab properly. They then sent her to a “re-education” center where she’d receive “guidance” on how to properly dress. Three days after her arrest, she was pronounced dead. Iranian officials say that Amini died as a result of a heart attack — but her family says that she had no pre-existing heart conditions.
Following her death, Iranians have taken to the streets to demand justice for Amini and call for abolition of the morality police and hijab law. So far, there have been eight casualties reported, consisting of protesters and pro-government militia members. Videos circulate of Iranian women protesting by publicly taking off, and even burning, their hijabs ― an act of defiance that could cost them their lives. The movement is active on TikTok as well, where women of the Iranian diaspora are chopping off their hair and headwear in solemn solidarity.