Interview | Growing Up Irooni- the Real Tara Joon

The Real Tara joon is a social media content creator, which is
not our general interviewee target. But, she has amassed a
massive following on Tiktok, with almost 1 million followers, and
even though she just started on Instagram, she has over 200
thousand followers there as well. Her videos really resonate with
people from all over the world, but here’s the interesting thing-
she’s Iranian, with an accent, and is a proud Muslim that wears
hijab. The thing that stood out to me is that most of her
followers are not Iranian or Muslim, and most of her fans don’t
even comment on the fact that she’s an Iranian muslim scarved
woman- they just focus on her comedy, and relatable stories about
her husband and things like eating snacks. If you scroll through
her comments enough though, you’ll see some really hateful ones-
and most of them are from… Iranians (and more specifically
Iranian women). So I really wanted to talk to her and see what
her take was on this- where she came from, how she started, and
her relationship to Iranians and the diaspora. She was actually a
bit hesitant to talk to me at first, saying that having her on
the podcast would be controversial for me, and likely to bring
some unwanted attention, to which I thought- let’s bring it on!
We talk about a ton of topics on this conversation, and really
dive deep into what it means to be an Iranian woman living in the
US, and being different than the LA stereotype we have of Iranian
women. I know there will be lots of opinions on this
conversation, but I hope you’ll listen to it with an open mind-
and with that, here’s the Real Tara joon, on Learn Persian with
Chai and Conversation.


Related Links:


the Real Tara Joon Tik Tok

the Real Tara Joon Instagram

the Real Tara Joon Youtube video