If newspapers are to be believed, Iranian women are a source of endless fascination for Western readers.

The latest headline to reach us from Tehran is that Iranian women footballers will be forced to undergo gender tests to determine their sex. Unsurprisingly, this story proved to be very popular among online editors with everyone from Yahoo to the UK’s Daily Mail publishing it.

Aside from the often dubious language in the reporting (perhaps the Telegraph’s Robert Tait can explain to me what it means to be “fully female”?), the coverage is a useful reminder to westerners of the complicated nature of Iranian women.

Unlike their male counterparts — who as everyone who has seen Argo knows are bearded, militant, Islamist fanatics — Iranian women constantly confuse western observers by refusing to be easily compartmentalized. The Iranian-American actress Kathreen Khavari recently demonstrated this in a brilliantly funny parody of Homeland in which she played eleven different characters.

But newspaper and online editors have overcome this complexity. They provide four easy-to-digest archetypes to finally understand the women of Iran: the Exotic Curiosity, or Oddity; the Fundamentalist; the Exotic-But-Trapped Beauty; and the Victim Of A Bizarre Culture.

THE EXOTIC CURIOSITY

The first archetype typically involves women undertaking unusual activities or exhibiting odd behavior.

What makes it such a useful device is that the activity or behavior can be defined as “unusual” or “odd” either for women, or for people from the Middle East in general, or for “Muslims”.

It is designed to elicit a shocked response from the reader, along the lines of “My goodness, not only is a woman doing this activity — she’s a Muslim to boot.”

This archetype serves as a reminder of what we are supposed to believe is the bizarre and often harsh nature of the Islamic Republic, conflating the social mores enforced by the regime with Iranian culturey.

The Archetype in Action: Women Ninja Assassin Agents

A good example of this archetype is the 2012 “news” story about Iranian women training to become ninja assassins.

The story, broken by Reuters — and which so angered the Iranian authorities that the agency’s Tehran bureau was closed — was picked up by scores of news outlets including the conservative Daily Telegraph and (of course) the Daily Mail.

The story not only describes an oddity — “black-clad” women doing martial arts — but also alleges they are part of a nefarious scheme to mobilize women in the fight against the arrogant West, a timely reminder of how strange Iran is and how its anti-Western tendencies work in mysterious ways.

The archetype was also used in follow-up stories to the “assassin ninjas” report, with Tehran’s women were taking up parkour. The Guardian — a traditionally center-left outlet — ran the story in its “women’s blog” (which, naturally, is part of the paper’s Lifestyle section).

The Guardian noted that parkour moves were “tricky to execute while wearing a headscarf” and adding that women were able to perform the sport “despite the bulkier clothing and head coverings Islamic dress codes require them to wear”.

So parkour is a strange hobby for a woman (apparently), and even more so for a Muslim woman (again, apparently).

ARCHETYPES 2 & 3: THE FUNDAMENTALIST MUSLIM/THE BEAUTIFUL ENIGMA

The next two archetypes — the fundamentalist Muslim and the beautiful enigma — are best considered together. Although they depict Iranian women at opposite ends of the sartorial spectrum, they cannot function without each other.

The Iranian Muslim woman is frequently depicted in the Western press in full chador, long black robes that leave only the wearer’s eyes visible. Often these women will be shown in groups, preferably demonstrating their firm support for the Islamic regime in which they live. They act as a reminder for Western readers of the “otherness” of Iran.

By contrast, newspaper editors also revel in publishing images of beautiful young Iranian women, usually wearing decorative headscarves in accordance with Islamic custom, often with some hair on display. These women “show off” their dedication to fashion (at last, something Westerners can understand!) despite Islamic restrictions, through their large sunglasses, trendy jeans, and make-up.

Look, these pictures seem to say, these poor Iranian women just want to be like us — unlike their misguided, covered-up fundamentalist sisters, they just want to be Western.

ARCHETYPE 4: THE VICTIM

The final archetype is that of the victim.

This archetype is used most often in those (depressingly frequent) reports about Iranian women denied rights that people elsewhere take for granted, or being forced to endure punishments for alleged crimes that would be considered innocuous in other countries.

These types of stories can perform the valuable role of bringing attention to the perfidy of the Islamic Republic’s aggressively patriarchal criminal justice system. However, they can also contribute to a narrative of female victimhood that assumes Iranian women are waiting for rescue from their Muslim tormentors by (presumably male) white knights from the West.

These stories rightly alert the world to the criminal abuse of human rights by the regime in Tehran.

However, they also inadvertently reduce Iranian women to the state of passive victims, creating an overly simplistic portrayal to sell newspapers or generate hits for websites.

HOW THE MEDIA’S “DRESS CODE” HELPS WESTERN READERS NAVIGATE “IRAN”

These archetypes allow the Western reader to navigate the complicated issue of Iranian womanhood with ease: chador = oppressed or fundamentalist; skinny jeans = liberal secularist.

This is not to deny that choice of clothing can be fraught with political significance. Pre- and post-revolutionary Iranian society and politics have long had a contentious relationship with, particularly, “Western” fashion. During the reign of Reza Shah, Westernized clothing was introduced by the state, much to the chagrin of conservative, religious and nationalist sections of society.

And during the massive unrest that followed the disputed 2009 Presidential election, wearing the color of the Green Movement was a signifier of one’s political views, as well as an invitation for brutal treatment at the hands of security forces.

LOOKING BEYOND THE ARCHETYPES

But it is not the deeper codings of these fashions for life within Iran that usually concern Western newspaper. Instead, they give way to the archetypes for newspapers to signpost “truisms” about the Islamic Republic, Muslims, and Iranian women.

As long as we rely on these kinds of archetypes, we do a disservice to all Iranian (and, for that matter, non-Iranian) women. With simplistic caricatures, the press seeks create and perpetuate Western-oriented narratives founded on Orientalist and sexist essentials, rather than portraying the complexity and variety of experiences encountered by women in Iran on a daily basis.

One simple way to move away from these archetypes? Consider women less as curiosities and passive objects that exist solely to demonstrate the harshness of a patriarchal society, and more as individuals seeking to negotiate their space and expression — and not just through a chador or blue jeans.

Consider women simply as people, whose experiences illustrate their own agency. Focus more on what they — Muslim or not — do, rather than what they wear.