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Date Posted: 18:50:07 07/20/06 Thu
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Pageant winner promotes progressive revolution
By pieta woolley
Publish Date: 20-Jul-2006
Former Miss World Canada Nazanin Afshin-Jam has inspired other young women in tiaras to advocate for human rights. Robert Kenney photo.
Nazanin Afshin-Jam thought about a career in diplomacy, but she opted to be a beauty queen instead. Don’t write her off for it; it took a shrewd understanding of power for the UBC international-relations and political-science grad to make that choice.
“Nowadays, youth don’t listen to politicians,” Afshin-Jam, a Tehran emigrant, told the Georgia Straight from her spacious Yaletown apartment. “They listen to stars.”
Before she became Miss World Canada and runner-up to Miss World 2003, Afshin-Jam worked for the Red Cross, delivering workshops on human rights to students. Fired up about abuses in Iran, where her father was tortured following the 1979 revolution, she wanted a bigger platform. The promise of 2.2 billion viewers—and a year with the world’s lenses focused on her—enticed Afshin-Jam to enter the contests, billed as “beauty with a purpose”.
The move has paid off. The first Persian to hold the title challenged international fundamentalists with her choice to appear at Miss World, spoke to Canadian parliamentary committees, and encouraged former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy to promote human rights in Iran. Three years after her win, the model and singer is still in the spotlight. This week, she flew to Germany to speak about women’s issues with Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. Last week, she was in Los Angeles at a 400-youth remembrance seminar for the 1999 Iranian student protests for freedom and human rights. Some of the protesters, she told the Straight, are still in prison, seven years later.
“The youth in Iran are going to make the change,” said Afshin-Jam, the composer of “Someday”, a haunting song about how Iran’s revolutionary leaders deceived the nation in 1978 and how, someday, there will be a progressive revolution. “Those of us on the outside can help, financially and emotionally.”
On May 31, 2006, the Globe and Mail ran Afshin-Jam’s picture on the front page, along with a picture of Nazanin Fatehi, an 18-year-old Kurdish woman sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for allegedly killing a man who attempted to rape her. The article described how Afshin-Jam is successfully leveraging her Miss World Canada tiara to draw attention to Fatehi’s fate. So far, her petition has collected 201,000 signatures (www .petitiononline.com/Nazanin/), and the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, recently stayed the execution and a new trial has been ordered.
As Afshin-Jam noted, Fatehi’s story should have been front-page news without a beauty queen standing by. But she’s committed to using the power of her beauty for social change.
“It makes me angry that this is what it takes,” said Afshin-Jam, who is 26. “But today, you have to work within the system. Bono, Angelina Jolie, they’re raising awareness to youth, especially in the West, where youth are so ignorant about global issues.”
She pointed out that without Jolie’s efforts, many people wouldn’t understand or even know about Darfur. Canadians, she added, have a dour view of beauty. Natural beauty and artistic beauty are valued, she has noticed, but human beauty is “a dirty word”.
“I believe that beauty is a blessing from God,” she said. “If you can use it to advance humanity, like a talented craftsperson who builds an orphanage, it is a blessing.”
Afshin-Jam echoed Sonia Ahmed’s comments (see main story) about the in-your-face stance Muslim contestants must take. Iran does not allow pageants, she said, and does not send anyone to represent the country at the world’s major beauty events. Because Persian women, as part of the diaspora, can compete, they can be part of the revolution there.
“This is an outcry for the gender apartheid in the Middle East,” she said. “It’s not a sexual revolution; it’s about women standing up for what they believe in. It’s about showcasing her as she wants to be seen, not letting a man tell her how to live her life.”
Under Iran’s constitution, the supreme religious leader, Ayotollah Ali Khameini, has veto power over decisions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran’s revolution will be led by youth, Afshin-Jam said, and Canadian youth have incomparable power to create global change.
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Miss Universe ’05 is off to Thailand
Wow.
Introduction 
(NT)
July is pageant insanity month!!!
