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https://nypost.com/2017/11/16/barbies-h ... oppresses/Meet Mattel’s latest doll: dressed conservatively, covered head to toe with only her hands and face visible. The fabric she wears is extra-thick, so there’s no chance of seeing skin. This Barbie wears no adornments. She also wears a hijab.
This new Barbie has been spun by Mattel and the doll’s inspiration, Muslim Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, as “empowering” for young girls.
Really?
Growing up in Maplewood, New Jersey, Muhammad wasn’t an integrated American teen: Her parents insisted she cover up at all times, even when playing on volleyball and softball teams. In 2011, she told the Wall Street Journal that she wore long clothes under all her uniforms — until her mother arrived at the perfect solution.
Driving past their high school one day, her mother saw fencers for the first time. “I don’t know what that sport is,” she told Muhammad, “but when you’re 13, you’re doing it.” Her mother loved that the fencers were completely covered up.
The same article explained that later, when Muhammad was in her mid-20s, her mother thought she should travel with a male guardian. She also bristled at sport etiquette requiring her daughter to shake hands with male referees.
Mattel includes the hijab Barbie as part of their “Shero” line. Lisa McKnight, senior VP of Barbie strategy at Mattel, told the New Yorker that the company “use[s] this line to create a halo over the brand.”
Could you imagine a Mattel exec saying the same about a fundamentalist Christian Barbie, let alone manufacturing one? A Barbie that, according to readings of the New Testament, would be required to dress “modestly and discreetly” — hide her figure, her beauty, and defer at all times to men?
What about a Hasidic Barbie? Women in that sect must shave their hair, wear wigs and no makeup, cover up their figures and defer to men, having sex at their demand and having as many babies as possible.
These abuses and humiliations of women in the name of religion are often defended by the women themselves, posited as choices they make. But that’s illogical: In such fundamentalist religions, women have very few, if any, choices to make.
It’s misogyny under the guise of religion, nothing more. Among the most shocking scenes in “One of Us,” a new documentary about three young people who leave the Hasidic religion, is one where a young mother displays her child’s lesson book. All the little girls’ faces have been blacked out by the school.
Would Mattel endorse that?
Last year, two female Muslim activists wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing the hijab only fosters oppression. Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa wrote that women who wear the hijab “stand on the wrong side of a lethal war of ideas that sexually objectifies women as vessels for honor and temptation.”
It’s incumbent upon all women, they argue — not just Muslims — to have these difficult conversations without being tarred as a bigot. They cited recent examples of medieval violence: the father in India who smashed his 4-year-old daughter’s head into the table when her hijab slipped at dinner, killing her; a 16-year-old Canadian who strangled his sister for refusing to wear the hijab; a teacher in Missouri who dragged a 14-year-old relative from her school, by the hair, because she was uncovered.
Hijab Barbie, empowering for girls? According to the New Yorker, when Muhammad met with Mattel execs so they could compare her face and figure while developing her doll, she refused to remove her hijab. Instead, she described her hair’s color and texture and told them she wore it in a bun.
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