In her memoir Lipstick Jihad, Azadeh Moaveni presents her reader with a striking picture of Iran circa 2000 and explains how, while living in Iran, she is caught between the fundamentalist Islamic government and secular youth culture. It details the daily clashes between the hard-line and religious government and Tehran's youth movement, a movement characterized above all by its dedication to being "modern." Moaveni uses the word “modern” to mean numerous things – sometimes contemporary, trendy, socially permissive, secularized, Western – but there is always one element that remains constant: modern is not the Islamic Republic. “Modern,” therefore, includes all rebellion efforts against the Islamic Republic. Modernity, for Moaveni, represents Iranians' attempts to reclaim their freedom from an oppressive and unwanted regime. For many Iranian women in the memoir, being "modern" means conforming to certain standards of beauty and fashion. Speaking about the waves of Iranian women undergoing plastic surgery at that time, Moaveni uses the term “modern” in this way. He says: It was an investment in feeling modern, in the midst of the seventh century atmosphere that the mullahs were trying to create. It quelled so many impulses at once: to look better, to express yourself, to show that you could afford it, to appear Westernized. The compulsion to resolve these internal problems through one's appearance was a curious phenomenon typical of revolutionary Iran. In a way it was dysfunctional: picking up the crust of a right you didn't have. (Moaveni 164) Here “modern” means several things: vain, Western, individualistic, but on a deeper level it represents taking control of one's life. It represents a rejection of the physical modesty that the mullahs impose on women in the form of headscarves and hijabs. Religious fanatics may be able to choose what women wear, but they cannot choose how they look. While every Iranian woman may have her own reasons for changing her appearance, every plastic surgery, every display of Western vanity, is an act of rebellion against a state determined to micromanage her life. Like Iranian women, young people in Tehran also express themselves through attempts at modernity, and these attempts often manifest themselves as imitation or acceptance of American cultural phenomena. But for Moaveni, the relationship between the drive to be "modern" that permeates Iranian society and Western culture is close, but complicated. Describes young Teherans' passion for American commercial institutions such as fast food and Victoria's Secret, e.g