Stardate 20020307.1817

(On Screen): Why do the Islamic fundamentalists hate us? Because we are undermining their culture. We aren't rampaging elephants stampeding through the streets of their cities, we're termites devouring the foundation of individual buildings. Their culture isn't fighting one huge battle against us, it's fighting millions of small ones – and it is losing, one mind at a time. Individual people who see parts of our culture find that they like them. It isn't our big things which devour them; it isn't the Bill of Rights, secular government, the English language. It's small things: rock music, blue-jeans, fast food, movies, and Barbie Dolls.

Barbie is the most popular doll in Iran, much to the chagrin of religious zealots there. Barbie likes nice clothes and goes on dates with Ken (who is also popular); she certainly doesn't cover her face. She's a career girl, a model, sexy and beautiful and glad of it. She lives alone. She wears short skirts and bikinis. She's a woman and she likes being a woman. And she's the star of the show; Ken is a supporting actor. She dates Ken because she wants to, not because her parents set her up with him. Barbie is free.

Barbie is everything that the Islamic fundamentalists hate about us. And she scares them shitless, because she's stealing the minds of their girls and making them think western thoughts. She is sowing the seeds of feminist rebellion.

The Iranian Ministry of Education has decided to fight fire with fire, and they've developed their own dolls which better reflect the role models they want to present to the girls of Iran. Dara and Sara are respectively a boy and a girl. Dara gets to wear pants, but Sara only wears traditional dress. Since she is 8 years old, it's OK for her to be bare-headed, but she has a scarf anyway. Presumably she doesn't have a pink convertible or a dream house.

Of course, the opportunities for jokes here are manifest ("Burqa Barbie!" "Dara comes with a stick to beat Sara with when she puts on western clothing...") but the reality is that this is really pathetic, and it is doomed to fail.

Those girls play with Barbie because she tantalizes them with freedom. That is what the zealots cannot stand, because their culture depends on oppression of women. But the only way you can enslave minds is if they never taste freedom. It's already too late; their children are already ours.

No wonder they hate us.