![[barbie-burka.jpg]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/SxbGmP4y_tI/AAAAAAAAKMw/MQr-ysXA5CY/s1600/barbie-burka.jpg)
- What's next in dolls that are "important for girls" to play with? "Illiterate Barbie"? "Forced-Marriage Barbie"?
In the process of conveying a general idea or a cue to an emotional response, we often seek instinctive recourse in a linguistic device called antonomasia. We'll substitute an antonomastic placeholder like "Solomon" for a wise person or "Hitler" for an evil one, "Pearl Harbor" for an ineluctable casus belli, and so forth.
The words "Barbie doll" used to elicit the image of a ditzy blonde bimbo. No longer. Since Nov. 20, the 50th anniversary of this iconic doll and beloved plaything of little girls everywhere, 500 Barbies --including various Barbies wearing chadors and full burkas -- have been on show at the Salone del Cinquecento in Florence, Italy.
The exhibition is sponsored by toy company Mattel, Barbie's owner. Dolls wearing "traditional Islamic dress" -- the burkas and chadors -- were chosen to be auctioned off by Sotheby's as a fundraiser for the Italian branch of Save the Children.
![[burqa.jpg]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/SxbGmePX8SI/AAAAAAAAKM4/D2aYecQAte8/s1600/burqa.jpg)
Some real Burqa Barbies - if they don't wear the burqa they might be killed - or face being attacked with acid.
A Barbie collector attending the exhibition from England opined: "Bring it on, Burka Barbie ... I think this is really important for girls. Wherever they are from, they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them."
I have seen some pretty tawdry advertising campaigns in my time, but I must say this one takes the cake for insensitivity. What's next in dolls that are "important for girls" to play with? "Illiterate Barbie"? "Forced-Marriage Barbie"?
One has to wonder what was going through the heads of these people. Mattel is a gigantic company with, one would presume, the cream of the advertising world's crop at its beck and call. Save the Children has for many decades been in the business of rescuing children from poverty, despair and injustice. And yet neither the world's biggest advertising brains nor the world's most child-sensitive hearts saw the impropriety of "clothing" the world's most instantly recognizable toy in the world's most instantly recognizable symbol of oppression.
![[article-1229760-074B1535000005DC-764_468x286.jpg]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/SxbGmhoQ70I/AAAAAAAAKNA/D2AupWZPksY/s1600/article-1229760-074B1535000005DC-764_468x286.jpg)
The dolls make a mockery of disempowered women who have been stripped of all human dignity, women with no means of challenging their forced depersonalization. There can be no parallel between these travesties of multiculturalism and other "diversity" Barbies -- brown Barbies, native-dress Barbies, pilot Barbies -- avatars that reflect the natural appearance and truly traditional garb and career choices of free women.
For starters, burkas are not "traditional Islamic dress," because they are not "dress" at all. Burkas are not a sartorial multicultural counterpoint to Dallas Cheerleader Barbie. Thrown over clothes, they are, in the words of an Afghanistan woman to a visiting Canadian journalist, "walking coffins."
The teeth of burka clad women fall out because their faces never get any Vitamin-D-rich sunlight. Is this a suitable object of play?
Neither are burkas "traditional." They were invented quite recently by fanatically misogynistic fundamentalists who make a habit of beating or killing or disfiguring any woman insufficiently self-extinguished by this suffocating tent. These women and girls are wearing chadors and niqabs and in many circumstances hijabs for reasons that have nothing to do with their own wishes or choices. Some even die for a failure to meet the draconian standards of the "modesty" police, as 15 Saudi girls did when forced back into a burning school because their hair was uncovered in flight. Having fun yet?
Many moms won't let their little girls play with any dolls. Many won't let their little boys play with guns. Their stance represents an extreme, but not illogical, extension of Western cultural ideals. In the eyes of the majority who do consider both dolls and guns natural objects of play, however, there should be no moral distinction between Burka Barbie and a putative G.I. Joe figure in a suicide vest for essentially they both represent a medieval Islamist worldview that flies in the face of the West's most cherished values: equality of men and women and respect for human life, including one's own.
Antonomastically speaking, there's a loss in this story. As a symbol of obliterated femalehood, Barbie has shed her cultural innocence.
National Post
4 comments:
It strikes me as odd that a doll which is already representative of many modes of female repression- overt skininess, emphasis on looks, etc.- should not be allowed to also extend it's representation to that of religious convictions and modesty. Would a 'nun barbie' be greeted wth the same outrage?
Misogyny is a problem for all societies, and believe it or not, hijab is probably not hte biggest problem for most muslim women. The lack of a voice or an independent identity, however, is harmful for many girls who are raised to think of themselves as 'chattels'. Barbie has been a symbol of 'girl power', regardless of the misogynistic tendencies she represents, for western girls for 50 years. Having a figure which represents the norm of your own culture for girls struggling to grow up with an identity- it may be just the culturally acceptable medium needed for showing that good muslim girls also have agency.
The Burka Barbie is comical at best - however, the news that REALLY struck me, was that 15 girls were forced back into a burning school because they didn't have hijabs / burkas on. Genuinely outraged at this.
The world needs to grow a set and put a bloody stop to mindless religious practices (Islam, prioirty no.1, but all of them really), it's 2010 for fuck sake, not the dark ages. Fair enough, even a couple of hundred years ago, we didn't really have a clue - times change and so must the world. Obviously, we don't have ALL the answers, but fabricating them isn't exactly a good substitute IMO.
As a pro-Israel German Jew, this is all I have to say:
1. Barbie is no "cultural innocent," and has been controversial since her inception. She was made as a novelty gift for adult men, modeled after the popular cartoon character "Bild Lilli"--- a prostitute and a gold-digger in pin-up comics. This doll was sold at bars and sex shops throughout Germany.
2. Barbie is a symbol of racial oppression and intolerance. Barbie/Lilli was was invented in Germany only seven years after World War II. Her features mirror the Aryan ideal of blonde hair, tall stature, blue eyes. Ruth Handler, an English-speaking American Jew who may have been unaware of the doll's role, took it with her to America and rebranded her as "Barbie." Generations of racist Christian whites upheld her as a symbol of what a "real American woman" looked like.
3. The burka fits Barbie's job description--- she is a "working woman." Barbie was originally a German prostitute and a fashion model. Prostitutes and models are two very different jobs, but both kinds of working women wear whatever their clients want to see them in--- be it a burka, a bikini, or a little black dress. No innocence lost there.
4. Not everyone who wears a burka is oppressed, just as not every woman in a bikini/suit/little black dress is liberated. Oppressed women come in all kinds of clothing. Since you mentioned that the teeth of Burka-clad women fall out due to a lack of sunlight, have you seen what too much sunlight causes to women in America? Skin cancer! Exposing skin also means being pressured to look think and shave, leading to shaving nicks, waxing burns, laser burns, and hair-gland infections. We are ALL pressured to reveal our skin because we get harassed if we choose to wear burkas or headscarves. No one wants to be labeled as a culturally-backwards victim, or as a terrorist.
5. Clothes do not dehumanize women, people do--- by judging them based on their clothing.
Burkas do not dehumanize women any more than any other article of clothing: the difference between oppression and empowerment is CHOICE. Some women DO choose to wear a burka, and automatically judging them as "disempowered women" without knowing them means you strip them of their right to have an opinion--- and turn them into a victim-by-default.
Career women are also often forced to wear clothing for clients, whether or not they are prostitutes. Women are fired, spat on, labeled, insulted, fetishized, and ultimately dehumanized for choosing to wear burkas and headscarves in workplaces in countries as "liberal" as the United States and France.
This exact same treatment was endured by Jewish women in the United States during the 19th and 20th Centuries, when they came to New York with headscarves on. This is why many Orthodox women now wear wigs instead of headscarves, because otherwise they get treated like freaks.
If we have the right to expose our bodies, shouldn't we also have the right to keep parts hidden, without automatically being judged as terrorists or victims?
Roxy, your comment reveals gross misinformation about the status and living conditions of women in islamistic countries as well as women in western countries... when you seriously put bikinis and career clothes on the same level as burkhas then this is simply offensive and shameful. you seem to have no idea that women are forced to wear the burkhas and that it is NOT a free choice, that they are beaten if they do not cover themselves or even killed. only a total ignoramus can compare this to waxing and career clothes (which by the way are worn by men AND women, ever heard of the suit and tie?). There is absolutely NO obligation to wear sexy clothes and wax yourself and all that stuff. Stores do sell a lot of baggy pants and sweatshirts for females as well, there are several fashionstyles out there to chose from from sexy to casual. unlike women in islamistic countries, we are FREE to chose to wear what we want. we might get less sex in those baggy pants cos men may prefer bimbos in high heels but it's hardly a death threat, or is it? social pressures and beauty ideals exist in every society because we are social animals and because we have sex to reproduce and attractiveness (in both men and women)is a reproductive bonus, but you cannot seriously compare inevitable social pressures to the obligatory shrouding of half of the population, which by the way is the complete oppostie of sexyness because it was designed to make women sexually unattractive and unavailable. shame on all the pampered western "feminists" who legitimate this sinister garment! it shows that you have no regard for your opressed muslim sisters.
Post a Comment