Laws don’t work well when many people openly defy them. Prohibition in the US is a good example of that. In Iran, it took massive protests against the hijab laws to dismantle the morality police. But what may cement this new tolerance of women showing their hair in public is the simple, casual defiance by many women in their day to day lives: [S]ince the death last year of Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of the country’s morality police, women and girls have been at the center of a nationwide uprising, demanding an end not only to hijab requirements but to the Islamic Republic itself. Women are suddenly flaunting their hair: left long and flowing in the malls; tied in a bun on the streets; styled into bobs on public transportation; and pulled into ponytails at schools and on university campuses, according to interviews with women in Iran as well as photographs and videos online. While these acts of defiance are rarer in more conservative areas, they are increasingly being seen in towns and cities. “I have not worn a scarf for months — I don’t even carry it with me any more,” said Kimia, 23, a graduate student in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, in western Iran, who, like other women interviewed for this article, asked that her surname not be used for fear of retribution. Kimia said that many female students at her college did not cover their hair even in classrooms in the presence of male professors.…