This girl became the Instagram queen of Iraq. And then was shot to death

Business Standard: On Oct. 9, the Iraqi author Sinan Antoon tweeted, “Killing those who are other/different has become a ritual/hobby, practiced by individuals for fun, after having been institutionalized by the state, political parties and militias for years.” His tweet referred to reports that an Iraqi teenager had been butchered on a Baghdad street by an assailant who thought he looked gay. But Mr. Antoon could have been referring to any of the young Iraqis who have tried to break free of the rigid social codes governing both genders only to suffer vicious reprisals.

The most famous of these victims has been Tara Fares. When she was killed in September, Ms. Fares, who had 2.8 million followers on Instagram, was the sixth most popular person on Iraqi social media. At 22, she was a self-created celebrity who mixed sexy fashion shoots with video diaries in which she fired back at her conservative critics. Ms. Fares was shot dead in Baghdad’s Camp Sarah neighborhood while riding in her Porsche.BS

When I read about Ms. Fares’s murder, recognition hit me like a punch. Though I am 13 years her senior, when I was her age, I also worked as a scantily clad internet model. I also reinvented myself on social media, posting endless photos of myself, trying to build a following that would somehow translate into something more. Back then, qualified only for menial jobs, I also saw my looks as a fast-closing door to freedom and used them as best I could. But I am in the United States, and she was in Iraq. The stakes for Ms. Fares were far higher. Her courage was of a different magnitude from mine.

Perhaps before, perhaps after her divorce, she had started modeling. The first Miss Iraq beauty pageant took place in 1947; the winner was a Jewish girl, Renee Dangoor. The pageant closed shop in 1972, though unofficial pageants continued in less extravagant forms, until Miss Iraq officially restarted in 2015. Ms. Fares made her debut in an unofficial pageant in 2014 in a bare, over-lit room at the Baghdad Hunting Club, whose contestants were extraordinary only in their ordinariness. She was baby-faced and wide-eyed and won runner-up. In 2015, she was crowned Miss Baghdad at the Hunting Club.

Around this time, she began to post selfies on social media. “I never thought they’d become viral,” she later said on YouTube. “I felt powerful from all of these replies of love and hate. I started to feel that I was strong enough to choose whatever I wanted, to dress the way I saw as correct, because it is my choice and my life after all.” Ms. Fares left for Turkey in early 2015, determined to find success as a model. Read Complete Article