The Italian Designer in Hot Water for Putting Barbie in a Burqa

There’s a rather extraordinary Italian Muslim woman I’d like you to meet. In fact, I’m willing to bet my bottom bite of bolognaise that this is an Italian Muslim woman unlike any you’ve ever met before.

Burqa Barbie was designed by Italy’s Eliana Lorena in cohoots with Mattel, who are celebrating 50 years of everyone’s favourite plastic blonde. BB, as we’ll call her for arguments’ sake (and believe me she’s caused a fair bit of argy-bargy) is being auctioned online for a Save the Children fundraising campaign.

BB Who you Want to Be

In an interview with The Daily Mail, The Italian designer behind the controversial doll defends her decision:

“I know Barbie was something seen as bad before as an image for girls, but in actual fact the message with Barbie for women is you can be whatever you want to be.”

There’s an interesting article about BB by Raaz in Muslimah Media Watch. Raaz raises the point that while Barbie promotes and unrealistic and unhelpful self-image among the girls, if you gotta have your doll, it might as well be a culturally appropriate one in the name of self-affirmation.

Flaming Lips

Everyone from NOW to Fox News has been waxing lyrical about how inappropriate BB is – critiques have ranged from feminism to terrorism and over in Italy, Lorena’s having to fight to defend her corner.

She maintains that her doll was created to represent Afghan culture as part of a series of 500 dolls depicting the diversity of errr… female fashion the world over. She insists that BB was never meant to embody a political statement.

Again I stand with Raaz who rightly states that:

“Burqa Barbie, in the end, merely represents a form of cultural dress (albeit tinged with a contentious political history and a little misrepresented in lime green and radioactive orange), a one-time design to be auctioned for charity.  Not every Muslim woman will necessarily identify with her culturally, but that does not necessarily mean that her existence as a form of cultural expression is wrong and degrading to women.”

Which leaves me with just one (burning) question… Who’s going to be BB’s Ken?