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It’s been five years since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, and though well-to-do urbanites have found ways to adapt to the situation, the signs of the societal shift are still rife in the cities, where life has changed the most.
Girls and women are still unable to attend government-run schools beyond the sixth grade. Female TV presenters must wear COVID masks that cover their faces when on-air. MMA, a once popular pastime with tens of thousands of fans, has been banned. And mannequins in store windows still don’t have faces, after the Islamic Emirate ordered store owners to remove mannequin’s heads entirely for risk of worshipping false idols.
Over the last five years, daily life in Afghanistan has changed significantly, especially for women. But it’s also become a tightrope walk between modernity and ‘morality,’ even for men in the country’s urban centers. That tightrope walk has given way to another: with appearance tightly policed, men in Kabul are still figuring out how to express their masculinity—even what it means to be a man.
Azizullah, a trainer at a high-end gym where memberships can go for as much as $60 a month, says the Islamic Emirate’s efforts to limit social life mixed with a lack of job opportunities and little hope of getting out of the country have sent tens of thousands of young men to the gyms that keep popping up around the capital.
“A lot of young men were scared and dejected after the change in government,” the 26-year-old said. Even after they eventually returned to a semblance of their normal lives and went back out on the streets, “A large number decided to take up fitness and bodybuilding as a distraction. A way to set their minds towards a positive goal.”
For most of the young men Azizullah sees at the gym — serial entrepreneurs, TikTok influencers, Taliban officials, and media professionals — the goal is the same as it ever was for Afghan men, “They all want to bulk, to get bigger.”
And many, he said, are willing to go to any lengths to achieve that goal, including turning to steroids.
“Too many don’t want to put in the actual work, they just want quick results,” this includes those who already pay Azizullah $150 a month for 45-minute daily training sessions. Omid, a part-time educator who works out at another high-end gym agrees. He says at least 60 percent of the guys he sees at his gym on the west side of the city “juice up.”
Procuring the performance enhancers is easy Azizullah says, so long as you know what to say. “You can walk into a pharmacy and if you know to carry yourself correctly, they will eventually give you what you ask for,” he said. “If you just know how to keep the conversation going even for a few minutes, you will eventually be able to convince them.”
Though substances like somatropin, a human growth hormone used for treating child malnutrition, can be purchased for about $20, Azizullah says trainers will often resell a month’s supply to their clients for upwards of $100.
According to Azizullah, his clients use the gym for fitness and distraction, but most of all, for attention.
“Outside [of Afghanistan], men hit the gym to gain the attention of women, but here, it’s really only the younger generations of girls that appreciate or understand what it takes for a man to maintain a proper build,” he says. And with pre-marital dating a taboo in Afghanistan, Azizullah says most of his clients aim to leave everyone both intimidated and in awe of their physiques, not just women. “They’re doing it for the attention of anyone—men, women, it doesn’t matter. Just as long as it’s someone who will be impressed when they look at them.”
But it’s hard to get noticed when showing off your body is against the law. In the gym, men, like women (who are no longer allowed to attend public gyms), are not safe from the eyes of the Vice and Virtue workers who patrol the cities in their trademark white lab coats. “They come in from time to time to make sure everyone is properly covered,” says Ahmad, another trainer at the gym. “They want to make sure your physique doesn’t show through your clothes, that your arms are properly covered and that your pants fall below the knee.”
The specter of the white lab coats also hangs over the city’s barber shops, where the barbers are instructed not to give fades, undercuts and most of all, not to shave too much off beards. “It’s difficult, because so many of our customers bring in pictures of K-Pop stars. We obviously want to give them the look they asked for, but we also have to avoid getting in trouble ourselves,” said Akbar, a stylist at a Kabul barber shop named for a European luxury brand.
As with the gyms, Akbar says so long as the barbers aren’t caught in the act of taking off too much hair, they are fine. The nature of their jobs, combined with the Vice and Virtue’s daily patrols around the city, means the risk is always there, though.
“Obviously, it’s not every day, but when it does happen, it’s definitely scary,” Akbar said. “You can’t just put back the hair you cut off.”
He gave a recent example of when the Vice and Virtue workers caught one of his colleagues with an undercut talking on his phone outside: “They saw him and said, ‘If his hair is like this, what must they be doing for their clients?’”
Akbar said they were working on a groom when the Vice and Virtue entered the shop, “We panicked and begged them not to worry the groom on his special day.” The owner had to call in a few favors in order to keep the store from being closed, Akbar said. That closure, which would have lasted at least three days, could have come as a real shock to the store’s owner and half a dozen staff at a time when general unemployment is hovering at around 13 percent. Beauty salons were banned in 2023, but barber shops, even with the limitations, remain big business in Afghanistan. Akbar says young men are now willing to pay top dollar for everything from face scrubs (using generic drug store products) and even hydrofacials that go for about $30.
Of course, Akbar admits all of this is for the more well-to-do city residents of the capital’s trendiest neighborhoods, “Otherwise, most guys just go to any barber shop, or even the men who will cut your hair on the street corners.”
And for the follicly challenged, Afghanistan’s biggest cities are now full of clinics that offer hair transplant services from doctors who say they were trained in Turkey, arguably the world’s hair transplant capital. Benafsha is an advisor at one of the city’s most well-known beauty clinics that offers everything from microneedling and botox to hair transplants. She says she has assisted hundreds of patients who have paid anywhere from $305 to $1,500 for the clinic’s hair services. That’s a huge discount compared to $1,800 to $8,000 in Istanbul and $2,500 to $8,000 in Dubai.
The city’s well-to-do young men are also driven by a desire for Western luxury brands, or at least the nearest approximation thereof. “They see their family and friends abroad wearing these brands and they want to do the same,” Masood, a worker at a store that stocks knockoff Prada, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton and Dior, says.
Wearing a knockoff Burberry baseball cap, green t-shirt and black track pants himself, Masood says that for a certain class of young men in Afghanistan, these brand names carry a real cache. “They may not be able to afford the real thing, but they come to our store specifically because our products say Balenciaga or Prada on them. They’ll pay extra for it.”
The proof of Masood’s assertions can be seen in the high-end cafes and restaurants of the capital, where young men wear knockoff Essentials, Fendi and even Alo to order cappuccinos and Yemeni mandi rice.
“They’ll call their family abroad and say ‘You paid $500 for this, I got it for 1,500 Afghanis,” about $23, Masood says.
Azizullah, the trainer, says though all of these physical markers are important to Afghan men, especially young men, they are not what makes a man.
What does make a man, he says is very clear, “It’s someone who takes responsibility for himself and his family. Someone who maintains good ties with his community. Someone who does not elicit ill-will among others.”
Unfortunately, he says few men manage to meet the bar.
“The reality is sadly different. Everyone says it, but very few manage to follow it.”