Iranian women sneak into men-only soccer match with fake beards

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Iranian woman wears fake beard while attending soccer match

Raw video: Woman in Iran wears fake facial hair and dresses as a man in order to watch a soccer match from inside the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, where women spectators are forbidden by law.

A group of Iranian female soccer fans donned fake beards and dressed as men last week so they could attend a match at a stadium where they're banned based on their gender, new social media video revealed.

Videos and photos posted by the women show the group decked out in red and wearing flags of the Persepolis F.C. soccer team as they cheered them on from the stands of Azadi Stadium in Tehran on Friday.

Mohadeseh Mahdavifar, who was in attendance at the match against Sepidrood Rasht S.C., said in a video, in which she wears a wig, beard and mustache, that it's her dream to attend a game in women's clothes, CTV News reported. She also said she's wanted to attend a soccer game in a stadium since she was six years old.

Women have been banned by the country's Islamic government from attending sporting events since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

The social media posts come amid new developments for women in the Middle East.

In October 2017, Saudi Arabia announced that women would be allowed to attend sporting events in stadiums for the first time. And in September, Saudi Arabian officials announced women would be allowed to obtain drivers licenses following a decades-old law prohibiting them from doing so.