Chinese actress dons traditional male Qatari clothing, blasted for promoting repressive culture for women
The complaints aren’t about cultural appropriation as much as about the celebrity expressing her favorable opinion of a culture that many see as hostile toward women.
A Chinese actress who shared a photo of herself dressed up like a local man in Qatar — the Middle Eastern country that is currently hosting the 2022 World Cup — has come under fire on Chinese social media. Critics are calling the image she shared tasteless, anti-feminist, and inconsiderate of the horrible conditions faced by Qatari women.
The celebrity, Jīn Chén 金晨, shared the photo with her 12.7 million followers on Weibo on Thursday. It shows her wearing an outfit that resembles traditional Gulf attire for men, including a white shirt and white headdress (known as a keffiyeh or ghutra).
Jin’s hands are covering the lower half of her face and adorned with colorful photoshopped rings.
Within hours, Jin’s photo and criticism of it went viral on Weibo. After attracting nearly 15,000 comments denouncing her behavior, the 32-year-old actress deleted the image.
Critics called out Jin for what they considered to be highly offensive and ignorant behavior. They argued that it was inappropriate for Jin to dress like an ordinary Qatari man when Qatari women have to wear long black dresses (abayas) and burqas that cover most of the face.
“Do you know that if you ever go to Qatar, you are actually prohibited from wearing the white headdress? You would need to cover your face with black fabric. As a woman, you shouldn’t be endorsing clothing that’s sexist and repressive,” one commenter wrote. Another replied, “Feels weird cosplaying for fun when real women in Qatar are enduring mistreatment.”
Jin hasn’t addressed the criticism head-on so far, but she defended herself obliquely in a follow-up post on December 9, in which she wrote, “Why do some people have to put others in an awkward position?”
An unexpected breakout star of the 2022 World Cup
The fierce backlash against Jin was the culmination of a debate that’s been unfolding on the Chinese internet in the past two weeks regarding the meteoric rise of an unlikely breakout star of the 2022 World Cup.
Although Qatar became the first host country to lose the opening game of the World Cup after losing to Ecuador on November 20, Abdulrahman Fahad al-Thani, a local spectator at the match, found unexpected fame on Chinese social media afterward. Throughout the game, the 16-year-old showed a wide range of animated facial expressions that were caught on camera, which quickly turned him into a meme on the Chinese internet. Many pointed out his resemblance to the event mascot, La’eeb, which was previously showered with love on the Chinese internet after appearing at the opening ceremony, with fans affectionately calling it “wonton wrapper.”
Abdulrahman was quick to embrace his newfound fame in China. On November 27, the Qatari teenager opened an account on Douyin, the Chinese original version of TikTok, where he amassed more than 15 million followers within a week.
As Abdulrahman was becoming an overnight cultural phenomenon, Chinese social media users have been trying to re-create his dramatic facial expressions while wearing white headdresses. Although most of them — including the one posted by Jin — seemed innocuous, voices of disapproval have grown louder in the past week, with a growing number of observers expressing concerns that issues like human rights and gender equality have been visibly missing in Qatar-related discussions.
“It’s very disturbing to see so many people saying that they want to marry a Qatari prince. Like do you really know what life looks like for women there?” one wrote. “I still don’t get how he became famous in the first place,” another person claimed.
Although Qatar’s constitution enshrines equality among citizens, a male guardianship system based on Islamic religious concepts has been hindering women’s advancement for years. Under the system, women need permission from either their father, brother, grandfather, or husband to exercise many basic rights — including marrying, traveling outside the country, studying abroad, working in a government job, or receiving certain forms of reproductive healthcare.
The emirate has for years sat near the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which tracks and measures gaps in gender parity on a global scale.
