Still fulla it

In September, I wrote about Fulla, the doll for Muslim girls to replace Barbie.

Today, I noticed I was getting a lot of hits from Yahoo searches for "Fulla" and I checked the news, only to find a new article on the doll at Middle East Online.

Some background:

Fulla is not the first Islamic doll but none of her predecessors have taken the regional market by storm like she has, selling some two million since its creation two years ago by the Emirates-based NewBoy Design Studio.

Saudi Arabia's religious police had then just banned "Barbie the Jewish doll", whose "revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West."

I love the idea that Barbie is Jewish. You can just imagine every pubescent Jewish boy fantasizing about her. But, of course, Barbie is Jewish in the same way Donald Rumsfeld is Jewish: her enemies are a bunch of anti-semites.

The article notes that while Fulla is marketed with a hijab, Egyptian girls can get a wardrobe for her that is likely to get her head lopped off:

"Her wardrobe had to be widened to adapt to the Egyptian market. In other words, she became more modern," said Ahmed, a sales clerk at City Stars, Cairo's largest shopping mall.

Fulla can now dress her perfect albeit slightly less busty figure with tight t-shirts and jeans and wear the same colourful head scarves donned by most young Egyptian women today.

No chance for a Muslim Ken doll, however.

But she is still single as no plans appear to be afoot for marketing an Islamic equivalent of Ken, as giving her a boyfriend would be seen inappropriate in conservative Muslim cultures.

Nonsense. Everyone knows that Ken is gay.