The My Stealthy Freedom (MSF) movement on social media has garnered over 1 million likes on Facebook and continues to make headlines in major media outlets. The founder Masih Alinejad routinely speaks out against obligatory veiling in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This study analyses hijab and the MSF movement from a Marxist feminist perspective, evaluating the emancipatory potential for women. The study attempts to untangle Islam from the discourses around the oppression of women to find the material roots of oppression upon which the discourse has been built. The legislation of women’s clothing and women’s bodies has a long history, with just the hijab having been made compulsory and forbidden three times in Iran within the previous century.

Through the use of Multimodal Critical Discourse analysis, photographs and videos from the MSF movement are compared to hijab propaganda by the IRI to identify whether the concern of the MSF movement is limited to obligatory hijab, or if it places within the broader movement for women’s emancipation. The results show that despite the visual emphasis on the hijab, the MSF movement has a broader aim emancipating women as expressed by the activists of the movement.