Saudi IKEA's Misogynistic Madness

I might have gotten out of bed with the wrong foot as we say in Finland, but I noticed something so disturbing today that I just HAD to rant a little bit about it. I mean this is complete and utter madness. So Dumb. Disturbs me what kind of sickos and women haters are out there.

This is the source of my headache, an article in the Swedish Metro magazine this morning: http://www.metro.se/nyheter/kvinnor-gar-inte-att-retuschera-bort/EVHlja!2mPseJ6LPTrK2/
So the new IKEA catalogs are out and can be viewed online at their site www.ikea.com.
All the countries have pretty much the same stuff on offer and the catalogs look the same. Except for of course Saudi-Arabia, the so called model country of Islam.

What's different in the Saudi IKEA catalog then? Can anyone take a wild guess?
They censored it. ALL THE IMAGES OF WOMEN have magically disappeared from the Saudi version. A misogynistic airbrusher has vandalized the entire catalog.

You might have seen how they censor stuff in Saudi-Arabia before, like blacking out half clad women from the swimming pool packages or placing white tape on celebrity decolletages, drawing imaginary black leggings and T-shirts on women in the women's magazines or spray painting the bare skin parts black. Heck they even black out the word PORK from food items.

I can understand why some of the censoring is done in Saudi-Arabia if I really really try hard to block most of my brain activity while at the same placing my head in a very narrow tunnel. But people, this is a furniture catalog, OK? Who the hell needs to censor a furniture catalog anyways?

Take a tour of the Saudisized IKEA here: http://imagesofsaudi.blogspot.com/2012/02/saudi-ikea-experience.html
The censorship at the actual Riyadh IKEA store has always creeped me out. Check this out:

 What on earth was going on in their minds when they decided to do that? It's just the babies mother for God's sake!

How about this? The woman is fully covered! Looks like someone has some serious issues with women.

As a woman I find this highly offensive and insulting. This must also be the height of hypocrisy. I wonder how many of the men responsible for this stupidity have maids (as in unrelated females) living in their houses? I would guess 99%.

What is the point to remove all the women from the Saudi catalog? Women do exist. What are these misogynist men trying to accomplish by this, trying to imagine women don't exist? Do they not watch the news or TV at all? Do they not go to malls or grocery stores? Images of women are everywhere in Saudi-Arabia! Heck there is even REAL uncovered women out there on the streets of the conservative capital Riyadh. Should they be blocked from public view too? Even the women's magazines that are allowed in the Magic Kingdom are not censored like this. So why IKEA?

I wonder how IKEA as a Scandinavian company is even agreeing to this. Sweden is one of the most gender equal countries in the world. What a mockery this is to equality of women. This is oppression of women. What an absolute shame and disgrace that is going on with Saudi IKEA. I feel insulted as a Scandinavian. As if the women are indecent or shameful and thus needed to be removed. These are normal everyday images of women, of mothers with children in their homes, not of women posing in sexy positions in bikinis or miniskirts.

What do these people think, that Saudi men can't handle a few images of mostly fully clad women? Are Saudi men expected to be so sex deprived they would go crazy to see these tempting Swedish women? Do these perverted minds assume all men think like them and would take the magazine into the bathroom for some "private viewing"? How disgusting. Is someone out there really this sick? For the life of me I can't understand what is wrong with this picture of a family brushing their teeth together:

And in the Saudi version the mother has disappeared. I find this very sad that someone thought she needed to be removed. What kind sick minds are these?

This is the scene from the normal catalog kitchen section, the screen shot taken from the UAE catalog. How are the UAE men able to handle the images of women btw?

You would think that women naturally appear in the kitchens right? Not in Saudi! They also removed the man though. But hey, by taking a closer look we can see the woman looks Asian. Wouldn't this be a scene from a typical Saudi home then? An unrelated, uncovered Asian woman working in the kitchen, mixing with the Saudi males of the family. Why is it totally fine in the home but not in the catalog? Can anyone say double standards?
Maybe they removed the guy too so that Saudi women don't get any ideas of hiring male maids! God forbid an unrelated male mixing with Saudi women. What would the world turn into.

Another image from the real world. A family cooking happily together, father, grandfather, mother, children all joyfully together. What is so wrong with this image that Saudi-Arabia can't handle it?

First of all scenes like this just don't exist in Saudi homes. Better to remove the grandpa (although he looks culturally acceptable with his muttawa-look) and the father so that Saudi women won't get any ideas in their heads that men do actually cook in countries like Sweden and thus become too demanding on the Saudi men. The woman is dressed so indecently that she needs to be removed straight away. The kids are helping to set up the table. What! Helping?? Where is the maid? Totally unacceptable to make children to do housework. This is what it should look like:

Except that the magic deleting wand forgot the wine bottle on the table. What a horrific mistake! Someone might some bad ideas from that!
How about this image. Honestly I can't even tell which one is the woman immediately. She seems to be dressed just like the male counterparts. But because she's a woman..DELETE.

How ridiculous can this get really? The entire catalog is full of examples like this. Why does the IKEA censor hate women so much they need to be completely deleted from the catalog? Above all how could IKEA, which is a company based on family values and comes from a country once chosen as the best country for women to live in, accept this misogynistic madness? Are women not welcome into the Saudi-Arabian IKEA stores?


Edit: IKEA has issued a statement saying it regrets its decision saying "We should have reacted and realized that excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalog is in conflict with the IKEA Group values." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030274200387136.html?mod=WSJUK_hps_LEFTTopWhatNews