Inquiry: How has growing up as a minority in America, and being surrounded by idealized “American” representations such as Barbie, affected my identity forming as a Muslim-Syrian American?
According to Katherine Zoepf, in a 2005 article titled “This Doll Has an Accessory Barbie Lacks: A Prayer Mat”, Barbie dolls disappeared from shelves in toy stores in the Middle East, and were replaced with the Fulla doll. The Fulla doll has dark eyes and “Muslim values”. The Fulla doll has similar proportions to Barbie, but she wears a black abaya and matching head scarf, and she is usually displayed wearing her modest “outdoor fashion”. The creators of the Fulla doll, NewBoy Design Studio (a company based in Syria) introduced the doll in 2003. She quickly became a best seller in the Middle Eastern region. Zoepf also states that “Young girls are obsessed with Fulla, and conservatvive parents who would not dream of buying Barbies for their daughters seem happy to pay for a modest doll who has her own tiny prayer rug, in pink felt. Children who want to dress like their dolls can buy a matching, girl-size prayer rug and cotton scarf set, all in pink.” Zeopf also states that Fulla is not the first Barbie to wear Hijab, “Mattel markets a group of collector’s dolls that include a Moroccan Barbie and a doll called Leila, intended to represent a Muslim slave girl in an Ottoman court”. I had never seen these dolls growing up. It wasn’t until Barbie released their Ibtihaj Muhammad doll in 2017, modeled after the American Muslim fencer as part of their “Shero” line, that I had seen a Barbie with Hijab.
The XO Valentine Barbie was sold in 2007. This doll had strawberry blonde hair which was lightly curled at the bottom. She also carried a black heart purse, and wore black heels. Her skirt was short and red and her shirt had a heart print and red belt. I named this doll Rachel. As a child, I loved Barbie films, especially Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, Barbie as Rapunzel, and Barbie in the Twelve Dancing Princesses. In all of them, Barbie vanquished an evil villain, wore beautiful gowns, and fell in love with a handsome prince. I wanted to be like Barbie, but I didn’t feel like I fit the bill. I wasn’t blonde, and even though I was born in America I didn’t feel all-American. My parents spoke Arabic, I ate Middle Eastern cuisine at home, and the women in my family wore head scarf. I didn’t celebrate Christmas, I didn’t dress the way that Barbie dolls dressed. When I was younger, I resented my name: people at school didn’t pronounce it properly, and it stood out among all of the very typical American names of my classmates: Sarah, Taylor, Michaela, Abigail, Clara. I didn’t even have a middle name, I was the only one in my class who didn’t, and when we were asked to sign projects with our full initials, mine only had two letters. I wished in sometimes that my name was Rachel, because it would be easier for people to say, and I wouldn’t stand out so much from my classmates. I wonder what it would have been like for me growing up if I had a headscarf for my dolls: if I would have felt less alienated and less different from my classmates.
In "Autoethnography In: Encyclopedia of Case Study Research", , autoethnography is defined as a “form or method of research that involves self-observation and reflexive investigation in the context of ethnographic field work and writing”.[1]My research falls into the category of “autobiographical writing that has ethnographic interest”.[2]I hope that people will be able to relate to my experiences, but I know that one’s personal experiences are not always generalizable to other people. For my midterm, I hope that examining ideas on Barbie as “American-ness”, I will be able to unpack my relation, alienation, and understanding of my identity: whether I was “American” enough in relation to my classmates. My inquiry lies between “self as representative subject (as a member of a community or group)”and “self as autonomous subject”.[3]I went to elementary and middle schools without much diversity, and so I was always the only Muslim/Arab person in my class, which consisted of mostly Caucasian Americans. I think I would have felt very differently had there been people more like me, or even just more diversity around me at school. My inquiry also seems to fit into the “subjectivist experiential autoethnographic” category of autoethnography, because it is where “the narrator’s subjective experience is the central focus of the ethnography”.[4]My research, I hope, will reveal “situated cultural influences and broader social relevance”, rather than be generalizable.[5]
Works Cited:
Czako, Zslot. “IDENTITY.” Visual Communication 10, no. 3 (August 2011): 419–432.
Flum, Hanoch, and Kaplan, Avi. “Identity Formation in Educational Settings: A Contextualized View of Theory and Research in Practice.” Contemporary Educational Psychology 37, no. 3 (July 2012): 240–245.
Marechal, Garance. “Autoethnography.” InEncyclopedia of Case Study Research,edited by Albert J. Mills, Gabrielle Durepos and Elden Wiebe, 44-46. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2010.
M.S. Merry, in International Encyclopedia of Education (Third Edition), 2010. Elsevier Ltd.
Muncey, T. (2005). Doing autoethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 4(3), Article 5.
Rössner, Stephan. “Barbie.” Obesity Reviews 15, no. 3 (March 2014): 224–225.
Saleh, Lena, and Harder, Lois. “Boxes Fulla Fun: The Fulla Doll, Identity and Consumption in a Globalizing Arab World”. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2013. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1496780552/.
“She’s a Fulla Kinda Doll.” The Voice. London: Voice Communications Group, Ltd., February 6, 2006. http://search.proquest.com/docview/204197019/.
Zoepf, Katherine. “This Doll Has an Accessory Barbie Lacks: A Prayer Mat.” New York Times (1923-Current File). New York, N.Y.: New York Times Company, September 22, 2005. http://search.proquest.com/docview/92932852/.
Comments