Ikea and a catalogue of sexism
If there’s one place men and women shouldn’t be together, it’s Ikea.
Turns out they aren’t. The Saudi Arabian version of the Ikea catalogue has erased all images of women whatsoever, the true lunacy of that nation of oil, sand and female-diminishment thus revealing itself. Women should know their place, the Saudis say. But where is it?
Women can’t drive, work, or even live in their particleboard-furnished homes, apparently. Perhaps they have little Ikea huts, sold separately.
Every nation has its secret shame. American gun shows display a core of weirdness that a genuine American patriot might not wish the world to see. Canada has seal hunt slaughter, surreptitiously filmed and posted on YouTube. France empties Roma encampments, leaving stunned young Roma mothers and their tiny children looking as if they’re about to be sent to Drancy and put on a train.
Ikea, the store that always acts as if it’s doing its shoppers a big favour, has apologized, blaming a zealous Saudi franchiser. But the catalogue remains online, eerie in the extreme. It’s as if a bomb went off, a special bomb that killed only the women.
While dad dries the baby, a tiny boy brushes his teeth in an Ikea bathroom. In the Canadian catalogue a mother is helping the boy. In the Saudi version, there is an empty space, with even her reflection in the mirror having been deleted. “Mornings are a team sport,” the caption reads.
Canadian, or perhaps Swedish, men and women proudly stand in a room having mastered self-assembly. Men and women try to share their lives, at home and at work, which is the great feminist dream.
In the Saudi version, the men are alone with their furniture, one Ikea handyman wielding a massive screwdriver. His photo is bigger in the Saudi version because the photo of a female homeowner has been deleted.
On page 56 of the Canadian version, a slogan hovers over a double bed: “You’ve heard about a bicycle built for two, how about a bed?”
On the same page in the Saudi catalogue, the slogan reads, and I am not making this up: “I love you but you’re making me very uncomfortable.”
The two catalogues are like those Spot the Difference games that you played as a child. The doghouse in this picture has a window. This picture has an extra tree. In this catalogue, the men are alone with small girls and boys, which does start to look creepy after 50 pages. Are these children orphans?
Canadians may not be shocked. We are so used to women-free spaces that we have almost stopped noticing. Entire websites won’t show a woman’s face. Books by women aren’t reviewed. The U.S. Senate is almost entirely male, as are most corporate boards. The U.S. election is a male contest, with the wives of the two candidates allowed a chirpy speech at the conventions, like a paper doll on a stick.
In the House of Commons recently, it was repellent to watch Conservative males stand up, one after the other, to support a male private member’s bill to “study” when the contents of a woman’s uterus can be measured and regulated. Life begins when men says it does, those men were claiming.
The female Conservative MPs standing to vote for a motion against women’s rights were the parliamentary version of the female bits and pieces that remain in the Saudi catalogue. I see a woman’s hand with painted fingernails. I see a fabric-covered plastic torso on a stand. The torso displays necklaces to be worn by the female ghost who can only enter the room after the photographer leaves.
Rona Ambrose, allegedly minister for the status of women — the word “equality” long ago removed from her mandate — claimed she voted yes out of concern for the status of female fetuses. It’s very Saudi of her. She likes girls. But pregnant women? Not so much.
The Saudis make plain what we in Canada hesitate to admit. Women, hiding in plain sight, don’t have a full place in the life of the nation. If we are fewer, then we are lesser.
Women don’t like this. Men who like women don’t like this either. hmallick@thestar.ca