“Ithink every Barbie doll is more harmful than an American missile,” declared Iranian toy seller Masoumeh Rahimi in 2002. To Rahimi, Barbie’s revealing clothing, her shapely appearance, and her close association with Ken, her longtime unmarried companion, were “foreign to Iran’s culture.” Thus Rahimi warmly welcomed the arrival in 2002 of Sara and Dara, Iranian Muslim dolls meant to counteract the negative influence of Barbie, who had long dominated Iran’s toy market. Created by the Iranian government, Sara and her brother, Dara, represented eight-year-old twins and were intended to replace Barbie and Ken, the sale of which the authorities had officially banned in the mid-1990s because they represented a “Trojan horse” for Western values. Sara came complete with a headscarf to cover her hair in modest Muslim fashion and a full-length white chador enveloping her from head to toe. She and her brother were described as helping each other solve problems, while looking to their loving parents for guidance, hardly the message that Barbie and Ken conveyed.18

In 2003, a toy company based in Syria introduced Fulla, a doll depicting a young Muslim woman about the same age as Barbie, perhaps a grown-up version of Sara. Dressed modestly in a manner that reflected the norms of each national market, Fulla was described by her creator as representing “Muslim values.” Unlike Barbie, with her boyfriend and a remarkable range of careers, including astronaut and president of the United States, Fulla was modeled on the ideal traditional Arab woman. She interacted with male family members rather than a boyfriend and was depicted only as a teacher or a doctor, both respected professions for women in the Islamic world. But she did share an eye for fashion with Barbie. Underneath her modest outer dress, Fulla wore stylish clothing, although it was less revealing than that of her American counterpart, and, like Barbie, she chose from an extensive wardrobe, sold separately of course. “This isn’t just about putting the hijab [a headscarf covering a woman’s hair and chest] on a Barbie doll,” Fawaz Abidin, the Fulla brand manager, noted. “You have to create a character that parents and children want to relate to.”20

Fulla proved far more popular than Sara among Muslim girls, becoming one of the best-selling dolls in the Muslim world. In part, the adoption by Fulla’s creators of Western marketing techniques, similar to those that had been used to promote Barbie for decades, lay behind the doll’s remarkable success. Fulla-themed magazines appeared on newsstands, and commercials advertising Fulla dolls and their accessories permeated children’s television stations in the Muslim world. “When you take Fulla out of the house, don’t forget her new spring abaya [a long, robe-like full-body covering]!” admonished one advertisement. Fulla’s image was used to market an endless number of other licensed products, including branded stationery, backpacks, prayer rugs, bikes, and breakfast cereals, all in trademark “Fulla pink.” In this respect, Fulla and Barbie shared a great deal. Despite Fulla’s success, Barbie has continued to enjoy a loyal following in the region, in part because of her exotic qualities. “All my friends have Fulla now, but I still like Barbie the best,” one ten-year-old Saudi girl stated. “She has blonde hair and cool clothes. Every single girl in Saudi looks like Fulla…. What’s so special about that?”

The widespread availability of Barbie in the Muslim world provides one small example of the power of global commerce in the world of the early twenty-first century. But Sara and Fulla illustrate resistance to the cultural values associated with this American product. Still, Sara, Fulla, and Barbie had something in common: nearly all were manufactured in East Asian factories. Indeed, the same factories frequently manufactured the rival dolls. This triangular relationship of the United States, the Muslim world, and East Asia symbolized the growing integration of world economies and cultures as well as the divergences and conflicts that this process has generated. These linked but contrasting patterns involve much more than dolls in the early twenty-first century, for they define major features of the world we all share.

Questions: What can Barbie, Sara, and Fulla tell us about the globalized world of the twenty-first century? What different values and sensibilities do they convey?