Surprisingly moving article from the NYT: Saudi Women Find an Unlikely Role Model: Oprah

[XemaSab]

Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.

A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.

Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.

“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world/middleeast/19oprah.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Berry Cool]

1. Keep workin' on it, Nayla.

Eventually she may give you a car. Then, if you are under 30, you can drive it, if your husband lets you, and you are modestly dressed, Saturday through Wednesday between 7 AM and 8 PM.

[HamdenRice]

2. The Cosby family image helped white South Africans let go of apartheid

We sometimes don't understand how profound the effect of our pop culture is overseas. I lived in SA in the late 80s, and the Cosby Show had a big effect of humanizing black people to white South Africans and giving them an image (one might say mirage) of an eventualy middle class black South Africa.

In West Africa in the early 1980s, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and Mohammed Ali had a tremendous impact on popular consciousness. Bob Marley's song's helped inspire black Zimbabweans to fight against Rhodesian minority rule and apartheid there, and the movement insisted that Marley be the main singer at their independence celebrations.

I don't quite understand Oprah, but I do know that the women I know adore her and she gives them some insight in their lives that I don't think anyone else does.

She may express to those outside the cult what she is in very materialistic terms, but there is something deeper there that some get and some don't.

Also, the popularity of Oprah hopefully will reduce the awful color prejudice in Saudi society -- prejudice against sub-Saharan Africans who still seem to be thought of mainly as slaves.

So power to her and to the Saudi women who feel empowered by her.

[XemaSab]

3. Kick

:bounce: