Excessive, Gushing Praise

Tyler Anderson/National Post

Nazanin Afshin-Jam was an infant when her family fled Tehran in 1979. The Iranian regime “will kill people before it leaves and it is going to be ugly but I have no doubt it will happen in my lifetime,” she says.

Praise where praise is due is never wasted.  But there are times when it becomes stifling, when too much is made of too little.  It is no little thing to mount a campaign to save the life of another human being, that much cannot be debated, and anyone who makes such an effort is clearly admirable in intent and determination.

An outstandingly beautiful young woman styling herself as a human rights campaigner and using her contacts to further her dedication to that task, would attract attention from the public as a result of the combination.  Ms. Afshin-Jam has other dimensions in her background; a Canadian of Iranian origin, she focuses on the Islamic Republic of Iran's human rights record in particular.

Newsworthy, to say the least.  She has also written a book, The Tale of Two Nazanins, detailing some elements of her life, and intertwined it with her campaign to help save a young Iranian woman sentenced to death for stabbing a man who attempted to rape her, to death.  All of this is fascinating and of public interest. 

She is launched on a publicity tour to sell her book and has in the process, attracted the attention of the news media far more than any other author might.

In fact, it could be accurately stated that the media have been saturated with interviews and articles relating to this woman and her mission, and her book.  That she is also the wife of the country's current Minister of Defence is another issue of attraction.  Oh, and of course, that she is also a winning contender in a beauty contest, as Miss World Canada and 1st runner-up in the 2003 Miss World contest.

She is, in short, a celebrity.  An engaging, well-educated and talented celebrity of great beauty.  The gushing grates, however.  And there is an intellectual disconnect, a dissonance in values that does not compute, making the self-professed defender of human rights and activist look somewhat narcissistic even while her earnestness is not in doubt.

It seems rather amiss for someone so dedicated to the concept of defending human rights to diminish her credibility and human dignity, let alone her level of intelligence, to participate as a contestant in a beauty pageant, and then to protest repeatedly during interviews that there is far more to her than the physical facade that has men falling all over themselves for.

Claiming her physical beauty should be discounted as a mere "shell", hardly indicative of the sum of her being, echoes that old claim that the 'lady doth protest too much'.  In the larger picture of things perhaps that shouldn't be held too much against her; she seems herself to be taken by her own beauty; hardly surprising given the reaction of those around her.

But for a woman with a political science degree, a Master's degree in diplomacy, a pilot's license, and someone with an intriguing number of international contacts, her discussion of self seems to linger too lovingly on the very facade she denies matters.