The sensational nature of the Iranian press in the 1940s has been largely understood inpolitical terms. In September 1941, occupying Allied armies forced Reza Shah Pahlavi(1879–1944, r. 1925–41) into exile, ending his tyrannical “twentyyears” and unleashing a variety of political forces which vied with each other for publicsupport in the press.3 The presence of Allied censors notwithstanding, so theargument goes, the Iranian press was momentarily free from effective governmentcensorship—though not from the recurring cycle of censorship that has dominated scholarlyinterest in the Iranian press.4 But a closer look at the often violent and sexualpolitical discourse in the Iranian press raises questions less about Iran's political historythan about its cultural and economic history. Why was the content of the press so graphic in the1940s? What economic and cultural trends sustained such content once it had been provoked bypolitical events? How much did the overt sexuality of political discourse confirm or modifynotions of gender in Iranian culture?