Declaration against toys
Out of context: Reply #21
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- lowimpakt0
It actually does throw up many interesting questions about breeding stereotypes and representation.
I know Saudi Arabia is more hardline than elsewhere in the Arab world but its not all like that. A good friend of mine just came back from the middle East. She spent many months there teaching in schools. She came back with a very different view of the Arab treatment of women. This is difficult to explain with my predisposition on the issue. She tried to explain that the women are in fact so revered that they are treated in a special ways - That their beauty is so great but it is kept for the husband. I found it hard to get over my western interpretation of repression etc but could see her point after a while. Often in the home the woman wears other kinds of clothes and exposes skin etc. but then chooses to wear the hajib or whatever outside. She then explained how we have forms of 'repression' in expectations of women and how they should look. this leads onto the doll thing...
Regarding the Barbie doll is it good to have young girls form a self representation to a very very skinny bimbo doll. Some say no wonder America has sooo much plastic surgery even on young kids and the huge crisis of representation that leads to eating disorders etc. The doll may seems harmless but put into the wider conext it means more than what it is.
This could get very academic and convoluted.......