Both makeup and the veil represent assimilation and conformity. Marjane begins wearing makeup not long after arriving in Vienna for school, having fled her home country of Iran to escape its oppressive regime. Her look of heavy, dark eyeliner—which her friend Julie comes up with—helps her feel like she belongs in Europe. However, while wearing makeup in Vienna is a choice that Marjane makes to help her fit in, the veil represents the way that Iran forces women to assimilate by making them all dress the same. When Marjane returns to Tehran at age 18, she and her female classmates at Islamic Azad University are forced to wear uniforms that include a long veil—a marker of modesty and submission under Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist laws. In Tehran, wearing makeup isn’t how a young woman fits in—it makes Marjane stand out, and in some situations it’s a dangerous liability. Marjane’s shifts between wearing makeup and wearing the veil, then, represent her ongoing struggle to figure out who she is and where she fits in the world.
Makeup and the Veil Quotes in Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else’s rules. Each telephone call from my parents reminded me of my cowardice and my betrayal. I was at once happy to hear their voices and ashamed to talk to them.
[...]
If only they knew...if they knew that their daughter was made up like a punk, that she smoked joints to make a good impression, that she had seen men in their underwear while they were being bombed every day, they wouldn’t call me their dream child.
I applied myself. Designing the “model” that would please both the administration and the interested parties wasn’t easy. I made dozens of sketches.
This was the result of my research. Though subtle, these differences meant a lot to us.
This little rebellion reconciled my grandmother and me. [...] And this is how I recovered my self-esteem and my dignity. For the first time in a long time, I was happy with myself.
The regime had understood that one person leaving herself while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my makeup be seen? Are they going to whip me?
No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What’s going on in the political prisons?
I didn’t say everything I could have: that she was frustrated because she was still a virgin at twenty-seven! That she was forbidding me what was forbidden to her! That to marry someone that you don’t know, for his money, is prostitution. That despite her locks of hair and her lipstick, she was acting like the state.
Makeup and the Veil Symbol Timeline in Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
