In [this] (http://i.imgur.com/ew3Y2VX.jpg?1) picture there are Iranian women dressed in a very western fashion. Is this how most women dressed or was this only for upper class?
I generally really dislike these question that have to do with how women dressed in the 60s/70s with regards to Iran and Afghanistan, especially when it has to do with these pictures that pop up in reddit every now and then. Just a couple of points
first, the pictures that you sometimes see are from a very select upper class that was very much geographically isolated in the capital and in no way reflected the broader society. I would also add that I can probably replicate those exact same pictures of women (bar the miniskirts) in modern day Iran, Sudan, etc and a lot of countries that are deemed to have regressed in how liberal their closing options are, by picking and choosing specific locations that might be more frequented by a specific middle class, upper middle class group.
here is tumblr site that is equivalent to the sartioralist fashion blog in iran http://thetehrantimes.tumblr.com. Maybe this will change your idea of the diversity of how women dress in Iran today. Now also notice that probably most of these women are probably upper middle class but I would just add this to my first point.
from my travels in Iran, I would actually argue that a much larger majority of Iranian women dress "western" today than they did back in the Pahlavi era.
-To this i would also like to add in a caveat of the Hijab and its various manifestations. If you travel to a lot of arab or middle eastern countries now a days you will see a lot more women wearing some sort of head covering, whether only partially covering the hear of fully. but this is usually worn with a lot of what one would consider western close (jeans, pants, blouses etc.) so I wonder how you would categorize that. generally if you even think back to the 60s, 70s, and 80s, wearing skirts was quite common but the wearing of pants by women was a much bigger taboo. Now a days wearing pants and tighter jeans is much more frequent among middle-class women. Would you consider that to be a marker of more western friendly clothing or is completely negated by the fact that they are mixing it with the wearing of a hijab?
