The Veiled Barbie, the Disfigured Barbie, and the Miniskirt Barbie: Reflections on Negotiating Conservative Muslims’ Fatwas on Mattel’s Doll
摘要
This chapter explores the depictions of Barbie in the televised, audio, and written fatwas that circulated Saudi Arabia during the 1990s. The fatwas of prominent scholars such as Alalbani and Ibn Uthaymeen contextualize the discouragement of the dolldoll(s) in Islamists’ households, a norm inapplicable in the narrator’s conservative home. While the name “Barbie” does not appear in the fatwas, the depiction of the doll’s origin, manufacturing material, and “thigh-exposed clothes” allude to Mattel’s doll. A decade ago, the contemporary Kuwaiti Uthman Alkhamis mentioned the Barbie by name in prohibiting the doll for its “likeness to human beings.” While Alalbani and Alkhamis forbade the Barbie, Ibn Uthaymeen didn’t prohibit it completely. For the pious, he recommended “disfiguring” the doll’s face so the sharp features cease holding a stark resemblance to the Divine’s fine creation. In this personal narrative, the historicization of Islamic scholars’ fatwas converges with childhood accounts of emulating the khimar of the narrator’s Qur’an tutor only to strip her Barbie down from full veils covering the face and body to a cropped t-shirt and a mini skirt. It highlights the role Barbie had in modeling in-betweenness and appearance non-binarism.