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Lipstick Jihad

Clinging to tradition

Azadeh Moaveni was born in Palo Alto, California, into the lap of an Iranian diaspora community awash in nostalgia and longing for an Iran many thousands of miles away. As far back as she can remember she felt at odds with her tangled identity.
Azadeh Moaveni seemed to be living in two worlds. At home, she was a daughter of the Iranian exile community, serving tea, clinging to tradition, and dreaming of Tehran. Outside, she was a California girl who practiced yoga and listened to Madonna. For years, she ignored the tense stand-off between her two cultures. But college magnified the clash between Iran and America, and after graduating, she moved to Tehran as a journalist.

Arrival in Iran

Upon arrival in Iran, Azadeh's exile fantasies dissolve. She finds a country that is culturally confused, politically deadlocked, and emotionally anguished. Her homecoming falls smack in the heady days of the reform movement, when young people demonstrated in the streets and shouted for the Islamic regime to end. Deciding to live an approximation of a young Iranian's life, she delves deep into Tehran's edgy underground. She crashes the drug-soaked parties of the upper-crust. She visits the ski slopes, fashion shows, malls, and cafes where Iran's hedonistic and rebellious next generation mingles, inert, yet desperate for change. As she explores the psychologies of these young people - demographically, the country's future - she discovers the kitsch, hedonism, and frustration that underpin their lurching rebellion against the Islamic system.
In Lipstick Jihad, Azadeh Moaveni paints a rare portrait of Tehran, populated by a cast of young people whose exuberance and despair bring the modern reality of Iran to vivid life. She also reveals her private struggle to build a life in a dark country, wholly unlike the luminous, saffron-tinted Iran of her imagination. Hers is the struggle of a young woman of the diaspora, searching for a homeland that may not exist.