Critical theory, authoritarianism, and the politics of lipstick from the Weimar Republic to the contemporary Middle East

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3867908
AutoresJanet Afary (0000-0002-6328-3621, University of California, Santa Barbara, autor correspondente), Roger Friedland (0009-0006-6125-9173, University of California, Santa Barbara)
Ano2018
Volume6
Fascículo3
Páginas243-268
Data de publicação2018-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical Research on Religion (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2050-3032 • E-ISSN: 2050-3040
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/2050303218800374
OpenAlexW2904289510
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas28

In 2012-13, we signed up for Facebook in seven Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries and used Facebook advertisements to encourage young people to participate in our survey. Nearly 18,000 individuals responded. Some of the questions in our survey dealing with attitudes about women's work and cosmetics were adopted from a survey conducted by the Frankfurt School in 1929 in Germany. The German survey had shown that a great number of men, irrespective of their political affiliation harbored highly authoritarian attitudes toward women and that one sign of authoritarianism was men's attitude toward cosmetics and women's employment. We wanted to know if the same was true of the contemporary MENA. Our results suggest that lipstick and makeups as well as women's employment are not just vehicles for sexual objectification of women. In much of MENA world a married woman's desire to work outside the house, and her pursuit of the accoutrement of beauty and sexual attractiveness, are forms of gender politics, of women's empowerment, but also of antiauthoritarianism and liberal politics. Our results also suggest that piety among Muslims per se is not an indicator of authoritarianism and that there is a marked gender difference in authoritarianism. Women, it seems, are living a different Islam than men

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Femininity · Middle East · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising