Twenty-seven-year-old Iranian architecture student Nina Siahkali Moradi came in fourteenth out of 163 in a municipal election in Qazvin, making her the first backup city council member. But when one of the candidates who beat her gave up his seat in order to serve as mayor, the Independent reports, Moradi was retroactively disqualified before she could fill the vacancy. Why? “We don’t want a catwalk model on the council,” said a senior official. Moradi apparently ran a “visually impressive” campaign that included pictures of herself, even though she is young and female (cheater), and amounted to “non-observance of Islamic codes.” Before we go all Femen on this one, let’s remember that a U.S. state supreme court recently agreed, ruling that finding a young woman distractingly attractive is a perfectly legal reason to fire her.
