Dying for beauty in Iraq
December 26, 2007 - Running a beauty salon in Baghdad can get you killed.
For about two years now, hardline extremists have been blowing up beauty salons. It's sinful, they say, for a woman to appear beautiful in public, and anyone who helps a woman look beautiful is marked for death. The most recent attack occurred on December 13, when gunmen broke into the home of a beauty salon owner and shot her dead.
Salon owners have gone underground in defiance, continuing to run their businesses at home for the countless women who want their services. Most won't use their real names in interviews, but insist that wars will come and go but a woman's desire to look and feel beautiful will always remain.
"Here, we give women hope," one salon owner said. "They feel like women, even during the worst tragedy."
These murders can't actually be motivated by religious fervor since the women are trying to be beautiful only in private. It's pure hatred of female beauty that motivates the murderers, which is what we've always said.
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