For the 50th anniversary of the Barbie doll, Italian designer Eliana Lorena created over 500 Barbies for an auction hosted by Sotheby’s for Save the Children. The dolls were fashioned to represent women from all over the world; three are meant to be from Islamic cultures, and are covered to varying degrees – one wears hijab and full-body covering, while the other two wear face- and full-body covering (niqab and burqa).
The UK Daily Mail quotes a Barbie collector: “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 […] the message with Barbie for women is you can be whatever you want to be.” Despite the project’s inclusive and celebratory goal, the three covered, Muslim dolls have triggered significant backlash. Although the dolls are not being mass-produced, as they were designed for the purpose of the charity auction, the fear-mongering rhetoric around the auction has suggested otherwise.
The argument against these Barbies is that the burqa is solely a repressive, degrading requirement forced on women in Islam and their presence signifies acceptance of the practice. Blogger, Angry White Dude summarizes the argument, writing of “the horrible culture of genital mutilation, stonings, honor killings and the rest of the degradation forced upon Muslim women. It is appalling a doll maker or any other organization would manufacture the Burkha Barbie. Islam is deeply seated in barbarism and violence. There is no good that comes from this “religion.” Only death and violence.” While the obligatory requirement of covering is permissibly debated inside and outside Muslim communities, it is an extreme distortion to argue these dolls are an endorsement of cruel and un-Islamic limitations put in place by the Taliban. There are Muslim women around the world who choose to cover independently; these dolls merely document their existence. However, for bloggers like the “Dude,” the Arab/Islamic world is a monolithic culture wherein every bad thing that happens to women at the hands of men is permitted, justified by religion, and even celebrated.
Marcia Pappas, President of the New York State National Organization of Women (NOW), released this statement:
“As feminists we believe that women must be able to make their own choices and that includes choices about the clothing they wear. But the burqa is more than a choice. Women are forced to wear the burqa or risk being murdered. Mattel should be ashamed. Making a profit by selling a doll that is clearly wearing a symbol of violence is not acceptable and there should be a public outcry to take this doll off the market.”
While Pappas acknowledges some Muslim women cover by choice, she denounces the doll because of the violence committed by regimes requiring it and reiterates the misstatement that the doll is for sale.
Feminist/Orientalist/Zionist Phylis Chesler is even less measured, screeching, “What will they think of next? A be-headed doll? […] A wonderful Muslim feminist hero just stayed with me for a week. She is a lawyer and an author. Her name is Seyran Ates, she is a Turkish-German, and she […] absolutely opposes the veil in any form. She will not wear a headscarf. Ates is a religious Muslim woman.” By offering the example of her religious-yet-not-covering friend, Chesler argues the burqa is not a feminist-endorsed aspect of Islam.
But if there are religious Muslim women who don’t wear the scarf – and become lawyers and scholars, even – doesn’t this imply that there is no direct, causal relationship between Islam, body covering, and violence against women? Throughout the blogosphere, these dolls have inspired critiques equating covering with genital cutting. Such conflations rely on a blatantly racialized imaginary Islam, confusing cultural practices for religious ones. For example, cutting is practiced mostly in Africa and Asia, while Muslims live all over the world.
Even covering styles and requirements differ greatly throughout the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, and there is no direct relationship between covering and religious piety. Like the veil, Barbie has been reviled as a tool of patriarchy and celebrated as a strategic weapon against it. It seems such a range of interpretations cannot be boiled down to simple answers without being reductive and arbitrary, and usually, politically motivated. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that all of this “outrage” and “concern” for Muslim and Arab women never translates into a large-scale platform for their voices tells the tale.
In the end, this conflict over Barbie dolls is most likely not about Arab and Islamic women at all; if it were, someone might have asked Muslim feminists how they felt, before making sweeping assumptions about culture, religion, and history. Rather, this is really about the threatening specters of Arab and Islamic “others,” who must be conquered, controlled and/or destroyed to preserve ”our” way of life.
Joseph Shahadi is a Brooklyn-based performance and interdisciplinary artist whose work has been presented in New York, regionally and internationally. He is completing a Ph.D. In Performance Studies at New York University. Joseph blogs about the intersections between culture and politics at Vs the Pomegranate. He is a Lebanese-American Maronite Catholic.
Good article.
If the eventual goal is to sell burqa Barbies or Islamic clothing for Barbies then I hope the burqas/niqabs/chaddors are designed as outer wear and worn over regular clothing. I have had non-Muslims ask when if ever Muslim women take off their head covers and robes. Even I sometimes forget that these women all have their own unique styles and looks underneath their robes. Some are quite into high fashion.*
*Have any of you been to Harrods in London? A must see. Robed women w/ sky high head scarves (apparently, the higher you can make the bump under the scarf, the thicker and longer your hair will seem) in Gucci/YSL/Chanel/… accessories, shoes, bags, sunglasses. Oh, and the make up counters…. These women buy tons of inner wear, as well, and I’m not referring to intimate apparel (though, we’ve all heard about that booming industry in the ME).
Thanks for the article. I personally dislike Barbie, because of what it has always represented: white beauty without intelligence (no offense intended).
Muslimat is a species of its own that can’t be explained through a couple of dolls. Even Razan, the Muslim version of Barbie, can’t define our diversity in beliefs, color, dress code, and style.
Although I have also never been fond of Barbie, I welcome the efforts by Mattel to be inclusive. Those Muslim girls who want a doll that looks like the women they know would be lucky to have a doll in hijab or burqa. I imagine those that have opposed the burqa on the doll are just fearful that hijab will be normalized. It would be much harder to view Islam as foreign, alien, barbaric, etc if children experienced images of Islam as part of their play and fun time. Islam and images of Muslim women in hijab could no longer be separated from “normal” life. Thank you Mattel for being forward thinking and open minded (and smart enough to realize the with the number of Muslims in the world, you can generate a whole lot more sales if all the Muslim girls wanted one of these dolls!).
Great critique of the bullshit fear-mongering that came up against Mattel’s Barbie project. I thought it was actually pretty cool that Mattel including such diversity in their 50th anny Barbies. There were Barbies in salwar kameez (head uncovered), in hijab, in burqa & niqab, just as there were Barbies in East Asian trad’l clothing just as there were Barbies in saris, just as there were Barbies in … etc. It is such a shame that the anti-Muslim rhetoric continues to attack even the most well-intentioned inclusivity project. Joseph, you and Salma (comment above) are right – they obviously can’t let little Muslim girls think that it’s any kind of normal to cover themselves as they wish.