Undercover: female football fans in Iran - The Guardian 🔗 🇮🇷 ⚽️ 🧕

For nearly 40 years, Iranian women have been banned from watching stadium football matches. The photographer Forough Alaei, a World Press Photo winner in the sports category for her Crying for Freedom series, describes following the story of Zeinab, one of the first women to disguise herself as a man to watch matches

‘I remember when we passed through the gate and entered the stadium, I couldn’t stop my tears for about 10 minutes. It was so humiliating when you had to change your face; we even had to bandage our breasts to look flat as boys. Even Zeinab, when we undid the bandages, she couldn’t stop crying. At first we looked weird to the men around us, and one of them was about to kick me. But after they noticed we were not men, they showed huge support. Then we could enjoy the match.’

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