Jezebel 
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New York, 4:14 AM
Mon Nov 30
18 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/23/09
jus make it more realistic to ACTUAL humans, my only issue with it
11/23/09
11/23/09
like i was saying, my main beef is how fake barbie looks...
so to have a more multi-cultural looking barbie, in all shapes and sizes.... would work for me
#tips
11/24/09
11/23/09
Hmm, now this is actually the justification that I've heard by Muslimahs and apologists, that it's just like any other garment(which I disagree with as it is uniquely restrictive and effacing)
11/23/09
Really? What makes the doll absolutely non-Muslim? Its coloring? Should we be launching a campaign against American Girl for selling Christmas and Hanukkah doll outfits independently of the dolls?
11/23/09
11/23/09
you'd be surprised by the manner of burkas one see's women wearing in europe and the middle east. everything from Fendi logos to gold embroidery head to toe and diamong and crystal studded ones for special occasions - the bright colors are not uncommon, especially at weddings etc!
good choice not become fox news fodder, though.
11/23/09
11/23/09
11/23/09
@labeled:
11/23/09
11/23/09
Which isn't to say that I think this Barbie was a bad idea, or that women shouldn't be allowed to wear the burqa. Women should be allowed to make their own choices, especially about something as personal as how they dress. But we shouldn't ignore that this style of dress is, in fact, rooted in a patriarchal mindset.
11/23/09
11/23/09
Also, I think it would be very hard to find a form or style of dress that ISN'T rooted in some kind of patriarchal mindset. How much of the fashion in the US is rooted in that and "looking good" to attract men?
11/23/09
Though I do not practice this dress code now (my family moved to another state when I was starting middle school and there were no such churches in that area), I don't feel that there was anything wrong with the code itself. I've always viewed this dress as what I was always told: that it wasn't as much an attempt to cover up my body as it was a symbol of my faith to people outside and inside of the church.
I think that by simply stigmatizing the burka we are, in fact, looking at it very one-dimensionally and making the women who wear them out to be weak and almost infantile in that they don't really understand what their clothes mean and that they need us, women from the West, to tell them how to dress. Their clothes mean something very different to them than they do us in the same way that I have very different feelings about my traditional clothes than women I describe them to. The issue isn't the burka. It's violence against women. If a woman is forced to do something on threat of violence or death, be is wearing a burka or sexy clothing, that's the problem. The abusive society behind the clothes are the problem, not the clothes themselves because how we dress our bodies mean wildly different things to different, thinking women.
Some of us like to dress in order to show our skin to make a point (that our bodies are natural and beautiful) and some of us like to dress in order to cover our skin to make an equally valid point (that our bodies are devoted to our God and thus clothed in a certain garb). Neither is better than the other.
11/24/09
I agree that the society behind clothes is more of a problem than the clothing itself. If we stigmatize clothes based on the society they are prevalent in, we'd have nothing to wear. :) I think, for those in the US, it's harder to understand the reasons behind a culture that would wear something such as a burqa, just because it is so different than what you are accustomed to here. You said it well, neither is better than the other.
11/23/09
What a silly generalization. The burka is used as a tool to control and harm women by a psychotic few under the convenient guise of religion and modesty. It is one of many methods used by zealots who will inflict violence whether the burka is there or not. Stigmatizing the burka does not in any way help those who are forced to wear it and it actively harms those who choose to wear it. Making it a 'symbol of violence' is unfair and foolish.
11/23/09
And funny that most do not realize that the incessant spot-light on the lives of these women is doing more harm than good.
Most of the muslim women I know ( and I know quite a few) consider covering their bodies to be their religious duty. Even those who wear burqas, they wear it by choice. It's as though the West has taken one maybe two stories of abuse (in the attempt to go into Afghanistan and 'liberate' the people, no doubt) and turned it into a crisis.
Honestly, do you not understand that to argue against the wearing of the burqa is in the same vein as the assumption that these women are forced to wear it?
I have yet to see it entertained that these women do it by choice and in making that statement, they are also showing how much of a feminist they are.
Irony: that this article is on the same page as an article that ponders how women are dealing with aging and how often they think about it. I wonder how many times these women who chose to wear the burqa have to worry about aging, what it will do to their marriage prospects and if they will receive the same attention from men as they used to.
Which women are the most liberated in this situation? Those who spend endless amounts of time wondering how a NATURAL AND INEVITABLE process such as aging will negatively impact their lives? or the women who excel in their culture based upon the strength of their character as they cannot be judged based upon their appearance? Who are the real victims here?
11/23/09
11/23/09
In writing the article found on this page about aging, very few of the women in that thread entertain how liberating it would be if we didn't have to worry about such things. If the opinions of the world regarding our aging were of absolutely no consequence to us. How much our appearance actually dictates our success in life and how we are the slaves.
Nor do you ever see articles supporting the suggestion that women should go makeup free. It's as if we have become accustomed to the fact that we will be judged by men based upon how much they want to fuck us and judged by women based upon how well-groomed we are.
It's ridiculous, the double standard that these women are inadvertently applying here.
11/23/09
11/23/09
So, let Barbie wear the burqua and let Muslim women choose whether or not to buy it!
#tips
11/23/09
I'm arguing that instead of the preoccupation we have with the fact that these women have adopted a full body covering (women who probably chose to hide themselves in accordance with their religious doctrine or out of general safety), we should be worrying about why our society places so much emphasis on our physical attributes (or lack thereof) and what we can do to change this.
What is wrong with people being unable to see your face if you find it to be outside the dictates of your religion? How does the appearance of my face impact my ability to do a job or excel at my career? And why must these women conform to our ideas when they are in a better position to make the case for feminism than any woman who gets out of her bed in the morning and gets tarted up to go to work?
11/23/09
11/23/09
Also, what are we talking about when we talk about women who choose to wear these garments? Many women are doing it willingly, but they have also been brought up in a culture that attaches positive value to wearing them. Isn't that like praising me, a born-and-bred New York non-Muslim, for NOT wearing a burqa? No one's forcing me to wear jeans instead, but to say I CHOOSE not to wear a burqa is highly misleading.
#tips
11/23/09
My problem with this article and others like it is that the language almost always implies that the women who wear the burka are forced to do so. Particularly with the debate in France, which deems that the burqa is a symbol of oppression.
And like you, I'm wondering, if this garment is considered oppressive, then what is less oppressive for these women? Would we be more accepting of these women if they walked around in minis and tees? If this barbie was dress in a bikini, would this be an article?
And yes, in my personal opinion, women who are not constrained by society by their personal appearance are far more liberated than those of us who have to constantly worry about our appearance.
Have you ever wanted a job and thought to yourself, there's no way I can have that job because I don't have a certain look? Or for African American women, how often have we had to concern ourselves with our hair in the workplace? Like as not, women who live in societies where covering is the norm are NOT subjected to these types of inner-debates (that is not to say that they don't have body issues, but rather when they interview for jobs, they don't think to themselves that they will be disqualified because they're not blonde and blue-eyed or because they might be considered too militant because they're sporting an afro).
Context.
11/23/09
(Insert something suitable here about capitalism or patriarchy or other evÃl institution if you like....)
With you so far. But....
...my point would be that so far we've *only* talked about *women*.
The day that men start wearing the burqa covering hair, face and body considering it their religious duty? The day men argue that it makes them feel strong and liberated, enjoying the freedom in being "judged by the strength of their characted and not by their appearance"? The day the men in my surroundings start to cover their entire bodies for fear that I would see them as objects and sexual creatures only (and despise them for it)?
Then we might have gotten somewhere.....
Or not.
Well, at least we wouldn't have double standards.
11/23/09
11/23/09
11/23/09
Though the burqa *has* become representative of the belief that there is something wrong with women's sexuality, it shouldn't be. And maybe putting Barbie in a burqa will help show girls that it is a choice that some people can make, just as they can choose to put Barbie in a string bikini. At the end of the day, it isn't which one you wear that damages women. It is the attitude of judgment surrounding the choice.
11/23/09
11/23/09
What would happen tomorrow if we refused to go without makeup the world over?
I don't think a bit of business would be done......
11/23/09
I apologize if I offended you, I thought you were making really good points about AtelierCeleste's arguments, and wanted to understand them better.
11/23/09
11/23/09
I don't know what this means.
11/23/09
11/23/09
Is the solution to sexualize and objectify men right back? Pinch those tight asses? Make derogatory comments about aging men (30), their weight, their hair, their wrinkles, their lack of exercise resulting in beer bellies and double chins? Comparing the size of 'packages' of your male co-workers and discussing your views openly in the lunch room?
(Not so sure, but it could be fun.)
Should men feel really bad about their own bodies instantaneously when, for instance, the David Beckham underwear ads air? Should we encourage them to? (Hell yes. The Eva Mendes underwear campaign just aired in our country. I feel like getting even.)
I don't know about you, but I have gone makeup-free for my almost 44years (minus 2 weeks of experimentation when I was 13), and that goes for miniskirts, strings, and the brazilian as well. I've never considered this to be brave or revolutionary or a statement of any kind. Should I have?
(But I'm Scandinavian, and we're from a different planet. We don't have cheerleaders and prom queens and child beauty pageants either.)
11/23/09
11/23/09
Yarmulke Ken, Pope-Hat skipper, Bopsy the Buddhist, and Bahá'à Nikki.
11/23/09
In my opinion, it reeks of orientalism to paint all muslim women who wear the burka, as being subjects of oppression and extremism.
When did every practice that is different from our own become evil and reviled?
This is not to say that women arent forced to wear the burka, but that many millions choose to by their own accord, and I dont think its fair to discount their religious beliefs/practices for daring to be different from our own.
11/23/09
I have a friend who—in uber-liberal Cambridge, MA, in Harvard Square—was attacked and had her coat, shirt, and headscarf ripped off of her by a mob of anti-Muslim ignorants shortly after Spetmber 11.
Feminism to me means that women should wear whatever the hell they feel like, be it a burka or a four-inch-long miniskirt, and not feel threatened, intimidated, or endangered walking down a street.
11/23/09
11/23/09
11/23/09
I mean, doesn't everyone have a moment when they're jeans shopping when the idea of everyone just wearing a burka seem kind of appealing? To me it seems like the same idea that's behind school uniforms.
11/23/09
If Mattel made a "Nun" Barbie, I don't think I'd accept that the Catholic Church could tell them to get rid of it. I could understand why they might be offended, but plenty of my friends growing up dressed their Barbies as nuns. It just seems like it's more an expression of the fact that girls imagine Barbies to be whatever they are considering at the moment.
Saudi Arabia and other M.E. countries can ban Barbie, but they don't speak for all Muslim families. I think I would like to see a Barbie with a hijab. And a Barbie dressed as a nun!
11/23/09
11/23/09
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11/23/09
I mean, it's not like Mattel is suddenly going to start selling the things, a point that seems lost on some of the commenters to the other site.
11/23/09
Remember Barbie is the American version. I don't think it would be a stretch to say they localized dolls for different markets.
They do that for movies and video games...why not toys? Would it be so horrible for them to make a Barbie doll that tailored to the tastes and mores of the culture that plays with it?
11/23/09
Right now, it's just a one-off display and to fault Mattel is sort of like calling out paint companies because of offensive graffiti.
11/23/09
"Look at those dirty Jihad dolls"
Now if the art show had strapped mini bombs to these dolls we'd have another discussion.
It's just short-sightedness on NOW's part to assume dolls aren't already being made to fit similar tastes. And to be outraged over making a profit from them when we pour billions of dollars in oil money into that region is laughable.
NOW is missing the mark big on this.
I'm not a fan of xenophobic imperialism.
11/23/09
It appears that some of the people on the other site didn't get the memo because some of the commenters (and the article's headline) are calling for a boycott.
11/23/09
11/23/09
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11/23/09
I agree with Anna's advice. No reason to be Fox's pawn.
11/23/09
11/23/09