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#WhiteWednesday: We’ve Power By Weave, Linen, and Women
Women around the world have been increasingly vocal, alongside many men, and rightfully so, about the injustices facing their gender. Often, it comes tied to some theocratic leader or political ideology bent on suppression of the equal rights implementation for women. All the while giving airy, arid, and empty statements about the equality of women while lacking practical substance, pragmatic empirics, to show for all the bluster (and blunder).
#WhiteWednesday or White Wednesday is one such manner of public protest started by Masih Alinejad, who is also the founder of My Stealthy Freedom, which started as a form of protest as in May of 2017. My Stealthy Freedom began on May 5 of 2014. In this, #WhiteWednesday is a campaign and connected to My Stealthy Freedom as one of its outgrowths.
Its surface manifestation is in the presentation of white headscarves or white pieces of cloth as symbols of protest. The focus is international while originating within Iranian women’s culture because before the 1979 Islamic revolution; many Iranian women, in Iran so not necessarily in the wider diaspora, wore clothing in the Western style of the time.
However, with the imposition of Ayatollah Khomeini, as reported by the BBC in 2017, “Women were not only forced to cover their hair in line with a strict interpretation of Islamic law on modesty, but also to stop using make-up and to start wearing knee-length manteaus. More than…
