Gender Roles In Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

As opposed to the 20th century, men and women in today’s Western world are given equal opportunities and human rights and are recognized as equivalent contributors to the well-being of society. There is a kind of freedom in North America that many foreigners are not granted in their homeland, usually due to imprisoning boundaries forced upon them by their government. In her autobiographical comic Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi describes her experiences of growing up as a young woman in revolutionary Iran and critiques the connotations associated with gender during that period of political upheaval. As a native to this strict Middle-Eastern country, Satrapi had much to discuss about the expected public behaviour of women and the higher standards
Boys were indoctrinated from a young age to become soldiers, tempted with literal keys to open the gates of heaven, and fighting on the front line to earn their entry into paradise (99). War propaganda glorified being a soldier, and it became less about fighting for a country’s values and more about using the military to protect territorial and financial investments. The young soldiers were filled with a false sense of power because they were hypnotized into believing it would grant them access into an “afterlife even better than Disneyland” (101). Girls, on the other hand, were kept at home to make winter hoods for soldiers, still with the expectation of remaining complacent and quiet. Satrapi also criticized government officials by calling them hypocritical in their judgment of modest appearances. Numerous restrictions were imposed on what and how women were allowed to dress, whereas men were given the freedom to “present themselves with all clothes so tight they were practically sculpted on” (297). At one point during a convocation, Marji publicly confronted the administration by questioning if “religion was defending [their] physical integrity or if it was just opposed to fashion” (297). Even more, Satrapi depicts how men’s offensive actions could be justified by the comportment of women, and how women were objectified and degraded by men. It was acceptable for a guardian of the revolution to marry and steal the virginity of a rebellious girl before her execution, as was the case with Niloufar, the eighteen-year-old communist who was only given a dowry equivalent to five dollars (125). For a country that placed a lot of importance on modesty, the gender inequalities were far more