Question: what do the Queen of Jordan and Susan Boyle have in common?
I’ll get to that in a minute.
But first, a little more about my unhealthy obsession with Queen Rania. There is a lot about this queen that inspired the character of Ranya Hayek in Cutting Loose. There are more than a few reasons for this. She’s evolved into one of the world’s premier clotheshorses, American Vogue - and the American public in general - can’t get enough of her. She’s funny and articulate, she’s of Palestinian heritage, and she (unsuccessfully) took a stand on an issue few Middle Easterners like to acknowledge - honor killings (because Arabs in general don’t like to add fuel to the fire by drawing attention to yet another reason why white people ought to dislike us. So we choose to pretend we are blameless in all this badness instead). She’s also one of the very few (if not only) recognizable positive female role models the Arab world has to offer.
Given that the country I spent a lot of time in as a kid had more royal princesses per capita than you could shake a stick at (Saudi Arabia), you’d think a hot queen would be no casue for me to get my panties in a bunch. But no one ever saw the princesses in Saudi. Not unless (like fictional Ranya), you happened to have gone to a snooty private school in Riyadh and sat next to one. Or maybe you were a woman with serious connections and a hefty bank account (or had a husband with a hefty bank account, rather).
So why does it seem like more Americans and Europeans like Rania than Arabs do?
Is it our long and rich history of misogyny to blame? Or something a little bit more complicated?
As usual, the answer is: it’s complicated.
Part of the reason Arabs (and Arab women in particular) aren’t too impressed with Ranya is for precisely the same reason she is loved everywhere else. Look at her - she’s so polished and perfect, and she speaks English beautifully… she’s like Princess Grace, but Arab, and a Queen! Of a real country! She is what every Fifth Avenue Bergdof Blonde aspires to be, but in brunette, and with a proper title to boot (not some bullshit Baroness of Oscar’s TrashcanLand or other such crap). She also started out in life as a “commoner” with a boring-ass job as a computer geek, albeit a commener with connections (which makes all the difference, daahling)
She’s like a glammed-up version of Pocahontas, in a poufy French ballgown and glittering tiara. Queen Rania is picture proof that Arabs could clean up nice if only they stopped being so damn angry, left the keffiyeh at home, and just tried to be civilized for once.
Of course, Ranya doesn’t just prance around with $50,000 python handbags dangling from her arm. She does stuff! Like reach out to the West by batting her eyelashes at smitten reporters and hosting her own Youtube channel (take THAT Hillary). She’s a woman who proves you can be allowed to jetset in public and say cute things Americans want to hear, like “Arabs just want peace!” while being meek and docile and a good mother and housewife and a patriot all at the same time.
And while I enjoy seeing a Palestinian woman stand tall among the world elite in stunning Dior slingbacks and Gucci trench coats, I also happen to know that Jordan is a dictatorship with a shockingly high unemployment rate. I know that Jordan has one of the highest cancer rates in the world because Israel pays to have its nuclear waste dumped in Jordanian landfills so Israeli citizens can enjoy clean air and water while Jordanians can enjoy malignant tumors.
I know that Ranya, like a prizewinning mare, is strutted out before a mesmerized Western public to distract them from women’s true status back home, in Jodan.
Yes, yes, I know we couldn’t get an anti-honor killing bill through Parliment last month, but look - Ranya made Vanity Fair’s World’s Hottest Political Wives this year!
It makes me wonder. If Ranya gave up all her beautiful, expensive clothes and opened up a few women’s shelters instead, if she lobbied her husband to give her a more meaningful political role than the Arab world’s answer to Angelina Jolie, and travelled around the Middle East spreading a message of modernization and acceptance of women’s rights, but looked like Susan Boyle in a veil - would anyone in the Western world have even heard of the honorable Queen Ranya of Jordan?
Click here to see more of Her Royal Ranianess.
