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By Aisha Gawad November 30, 2009 Remember when old white dudes used to sit around in places like 19th century Egypt and pontificate on questions like “why are the Muslim people so backwards?” and “I wonder what that woman looks like under that veil? I bet she’s a real tiger in the bedroom.” This, my friends, is what people much smarter than me (take Edward Said for instance) would call “Orientalism”. But if you think Orientalism died out in the 19th century, watching the new advertisement by Liaison Dangereuse, a German lingerie company, will show you otherwise. The exoticization of Muslim women is still very much alive and well. In the ad, a beautiful young woman is seen getting dressed. She comes out of the shower (with smoky black eyeliner already magically applied) and puts on some very sexy lingerie. Oh la la. Then she proceeds to walk around her house in nothing but the lingerie and high heels, which is what we women do to feel sexy, obviously. Finally, and here’s the kicker, we see her as she is stepping out of her home and onto the street. She is wearing (drum roll please) a burqa. “Sexiness is for everyone,” the tagline reads. Muslimah Media Watch speculated on the ad’s intentions. They suggest that perhaps the creators of the ad were trying to send an empowering message to women - that sexiness is something that a woman can celebrate privately. But I also think they rightly come to the conclusion that even if this ad was meant to be empowering, it really misses the mark. In my opinion, it’s an absurd mystification of the Muslim women, similar to the Western imagination of the harem. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this ad really is empowering to women and celebrates the inner sexiness of veiled Muslim. What do you think? Watch the clip (be warned that it is a tad explicit) and send us your thoughts. http://www.elanthemag.com/index.php/site/blog_detail/whatcha_got_under_that_burqa_is_this_ad_empowering_or_insulting-nid43038435/