Liaison Dangereuse, a German online lingerie store, recently released a new video advertisement.\u00a0 With Arabic-sounding music in the background, a woman is shown getting out of the shower (we can see, from the back, that she has no clothes on), putting on her make-up, then walking (wearing nothing but high heels\u2013to each her own, I suppose) to her dresser, where she puts on her underwear, bra and socks, all the while looking at herself in the mirror.\u00a0 Last (anyone see where this is going yet?), she puts on a burqa.\u00a0 The final scene is of her face at a window, with this phrase showing up: \u201cSexiness for everyone.\u00a0 Everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warning: This video contains explicit images. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Some have suggested the add may be empowering (and, according to this one<\/a>, especially empowering for \u201cwomen in certain desert nations.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m not even going to go there.)\u00a0 As Dodai of Jezebel<\/a> writes, with some reservations, \u201cYou could view the woman in the commercial as confident and self-assured.\u201d\u00a0 True.\u00a0 Furthermore, unlike the major impression given in a different discussion<\/a> about Muslim women\u2019s lingerie, the confidence and \u201csexiness\u201d that this woman displays are seemingly for her alone; she is not wearing this clothing simply to be attractive to a man.\u00a0 We can perhaps even take from this an empowering message for everyone, the idea that we can all feel sexy, if we so choose, without anyone else having to see us or to think of us as sexy.<\/p>\n But.<\/p>\n All of that said, the empowerment message doesn\u2019t really hold up.\u00a0 There is a whole lot of irony that these images are made so explicit in a public advertisement, given that they are supposedly valuing a sexuality that isn\u2019t overtly expressed on the outside.\u00a0 The public spectacle of an apparent private moment of expressing confidence in one\u2019s own body obviously negates the privacy of that moment.<\/p>\n All the other arguments aside, it seems therefore pretty hard to argue that this ad is something positive or empowering, if it would probably be rather offensive and disrespectful to most of those who would presumably be the ones it attempts to empower.<\/p>\n And, although the message seems to be about personal sexuality, there\u2019s definitely still a strong male gaze and sense of objectification (and exoticization) at play, and it\u2019s pretty unlikely that this was irrelevant in the construction of the video.\u00a0 One online response<\/a> to the advertisement referred to its protagonist as an \u201cexotic hottie\u201d that the audience (and I\u2019m guessing this is referring specifically to the heterosexual male component of the audience) is \u201ctreated to.\u201d\u00a0 Another<\/a> says:<\/p>\n Welcome to Friday, gentlemen, a day when your mind drifts to thinking about risking surfing porn from your work desk. Well, here\u2019s a video appetizer, via Berlin ad agency glow GmbH, for German online lingerie store Liaison Dangereuse. Tagline: Sexiness for everyone. Everywhere.\u201d It\u2019s got brief bare butt, and an ending twist that\u2019ll make you Catholics feel a little guilty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So yeah, sexiness is \u201ceverywhere\u201d and \u201cfor everyone,\u201d ready to be served up as your pre-weekend porn appetizer.\u00a0 Great.<\/p>\n More important is the bigger context in which this ad appears \u2013 the fascination about Muslim women\u2019s bodies, and the curiosity about what\u2019s \u201cbehind the veil.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, this isn\u2019t even the first time that Muslim women\u2019s lingerie<\/a> has been discussed<\/a> on MMW<\/em>; apparently, it\u2019s a hot topic.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 As I\u2019ve said previously<\/a>,<\/p>\n What could be a more titillating image than that of a Muslim women (presumably veiled, of course) picking out something sexy to wear when in her private harem<\/span> home?\u00a0 It might as well be proof of the Orientalist fantasy of the seductive, exotic temptress that exists within every Muslim woman, if only we could unveil her. (*shudder*)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sadly, this isn\u2019t even remotely new; see, for example, the kind of work that\u2019s been done on the behind-the-veil\/into-the-harem writing of colonial times.\u00a0 Meyda Yegenoglu\u2019s Colonial Fantasies<\/em><\/a> or Malek Alloula\u2019s work (summarised fairly well here<\/a>) are interesting places to start.\u00a0 The obsession with the veil (and with what\u2019s under it) has a long history, and one that is intricately connected to colonization, racism, and sexism.\u00a0 This advertisement does nothing to disrupt that history, leaving us with a character who is still being objectified, as a Muslim and as a woman, even when this is under the guise of female empowerment.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Liaison Dangereuse, a German online lingerie store, recently released a new video advertisement.\u00a0 With Arabic-sounding music in the background, a woman is shown getting out of the shower (we can see, from the back, that she has no clothes on), putting on her make-up, then walking (wearing nothing but high heels\u2013to each her own, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[245,760,769,928,1215],"class_list":["post-5021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertisements","tag-burqa","tag-liaison-dangereuse","tag-lingerie","tag-muslim-women","tag-sexism"],"yoast_head":"\n