While Iran’s religious leaders first declared Barbie un-Islamic in 1996, they have only recently begun cracking down on shopkeepers selling the iconic dolls, produced by Los Angeles’s Mattel, Inc. For years, Barbie dolls have been sold openly on store shelves in Tehran, but a few weeks ago the moral police started enforcing the ban. “About three weeks ago they (the morality police) came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies,” a shopkeeper in Tehran told Reuters.
To counter the extremely high demand for Barbie, Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults created an alternative to Barbie, Sara and Dara, in 2002. Clothed in traditional Iranian outfits and finished off with an ample uni-brow, the dolls have not exactly been hot items. Store owners claim that they put these dolls in the shop windows to please authorities and keep the prized Barbies hidden out of site.
Farnaz, a 38-year-old mother put it this way: “My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat,” she told Reuters. Unrealistic standards of beauty, America's most WTF export.
Iran has been fighting a culture war against the West since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, a battle that has become more and more difficult to win in the age of the internet and other mass media. Some shop owners support the ban and see Barbie as foreign to Iranian culture.
Toy seller Masoumeh Rahimi put it this way: “I think every Barbie doll is more harmful than an American missile.” Sanity could not be reached for a comment.
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