TEHRAN — Police have closed down dozens of toy shops for selling Barbie dolls in Iran, part of a decades-long crackdown against “manifestations of Western culture,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported Friday.
Barbie dolls are sold wearing swimsuits and miniskirts in a society where women must wear headscarves in public, and men and women are not allowed to swim together.
A ban on the sale of the Barbies was imposed in the mid-1990s. In its latest report, Mehr quoted a police official as saying authorities confiscated the dolls from Tehran stores in a “new phase” of the campaign.
In 1996, a government-backed children’s agency called Barbie a “Trojan horse,” sneaking in Western influences such as makeup and revealing clothes.
Authorities started confiscating the dolls from stores in 2002. The campaign was eventually dropped.
Iran that year also introduced its own dolls — twins Dara and Sara, designed to promote traditional values with modest clothing and pro-family values — but those proved unable to stem the Barbie tide.
Despite bans on many Western books, movies, satellite TV channels, music, haircuts and fashion, young people maintain their interest in that culture.
Iran’s state TV channels broadcast several Western and Hollywood films every week. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution ousted a pro-Western monarchy, Islamists have repeatedly tried to fight what they see as a cultural “invasion.”
In 2008, the Iranian judiciary warned against the “destructive” cultural and social consequences of importing Barbie dolls and other Western toys. Even so, Iranian markets have been full of them.
