Marji and Tambu each assimilate themselves into western culture,
"It would be a marvelous opportunity, she said sarcastically, to forget. To forget who you were, what you were and why you were that. The process, she said, was called assimilation, and that was what was intended for the precocious few who might prove a nuisance if left to themselves" (178).

Assimilation includes allowing someone to change your name because it's easier, to stop using your native language, and the eventual loss of that language, to give up parts of your culture in order to fit in (clothes, ect.). her everyday life in the hopes of finding a more empowered identity for herself. use of western culture to indivilize themselves
In Alan Ball’s film Towelhead (2008) and Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel
Persepolis (2000/2001), the adolescent female protagonists from Middle Eastern cultures desire to empower their own identities through utilizing Western media and its images of independent women, as well as the role models they encounter in their actual lives. background must find the perfect balance between what is expected of them in their environments and what they desire as individuals. From the time that they are born, these girls have social expectations created for them by the men in their lives.
In the beginning of both Persepolis and Towelhead, this is exactly how the adolescents live their lives, conforming to society rather than being individuals in any positive sense. Because they are so young and unaware of how empowered women can be in other parts of the world, they are stuck in their own self-created states of disempowerment in their own countries (like Iran and Lebanon). As Marjane and Jasira grow older, they begin to look past their specific cultures’ morals and begin to pay closer attention to role models in the media in order to create a new purpose for themselves.
After all, the media is the ultimate playground for creativity, especially in adolescence. In
Persepolis, Marjane looks towards popular Western music to help shape her individuality. She takes interests in Iron Maiden and Kim Wilde, two completely different types of music and looks that one might typically find in her culture. The loud music and the singers’ looks inspire Marjane to rebel against her society and become a
“punk-rock” devotee. The music helps her connect to what might possibly be her future inner and outer self, something that is not encouraged by the government of Iran at all.