Iranian Actress Banned from Homeland after Naked Magazine Shoot

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: An Iranian actress has been told she is no longer welcome in her homeland after she posed naked in a French news magazine as a symbolic protest against strictures on women.

The nude photo of Golshifteh Farahani has been published by Madame Le Figaro magazine. The publication has attracted a wave of visitors to her Facebook page from Iran and the Middle East.

The Paris-based actress left Iran last year in protest against restrictive Islamic codes that the Iranian cinema industry has to follow under Ahmadinejad's conservative cultural policies.

Now she said the government has sent a communication telling her not to travel back to her homeland.

"I was told by a Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guide official that Iran does not need any actors or artists. You may offer your artistic services somewhere else", Farahani said. » | Damien McElroy, and Ahmad Vahdat | Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Egypt's Nude Blogger, Defiant: 'I Stand By Everything'

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES: Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, the Egyptian blogger who shocked the Arab world with her nude pictures posted on Twitter, has broken cover to issue a defiant rebuttal on Facebook to accusations of insulting Islam, saying she does not "acknowledge any discriminatory law".

In a status update on Facebook, the 20-year-old activist reiterated her commitment to defend freedom of expression and civil rights, asserting it was her undeniable personal choice to publish naked pictures of herself on Twitter.

"I stand by every letter I wrote and every photo I published and will say that I don't acknowledge any laws that limit freedoms or are discriminatory if I was called for investigation," she wrote.
The Egyptian Coalition of Islamic Law Graduates filed a suit against Aliaa Elmahdy and her boyfriend, the blogger Kareem Amer, under charges of "violating morals, inciting indecency and insulting Islam."

The coalition's Facebook page called for Elmahdy and Amer to be punished according to Islamic law.
"The old constitution and the new declarations of the new one says Islamic law is the source of governing, therefore we asked for Islamic law penalties to be executed on the two bloggers," Ahmed Yehia, coordinator of the coalition, told Bikyamasr.com.

"It is an insult to the revolution as these two persons who pretend to be one of the revolutionists and asking for sexual freedoms. They are giving the uprising a bad name," he continued.

"It is our duty to fight corruption and this is a corruption case, people who are trying to corrupt society with foreign and unacceptable customs like the sexual freedom they ask for," continued Yehia. » | Gianluca Mezzofiore | Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Related here and here

'It Doesn't Matter If You're Jewish, Arab Straight or Lesbian': Israeli Women Strip In Support of Nude Egyptian Blogger

MAIL ONLINE: When an Egyptian activist posted a nude picture of herself online in protest at the lack of freedom of expression, it sparked outrage in her country.

Now, a group of women in Israel have also stripped off in a show of solidarity.

Inspired by 20-year-old Aliaa Elmahdy's bold move, the 40 Israelis posed naked for a 'copycat' shot - holding a banner to cover their modesty.

The sign read 'Homage to Aliaa El Mahdi. Sisters in Israel' with the slogan 'Love without Limits', written in Arabic and Hebrew.

Led by 28-year-old Or Templar, who set up a group on a social networking website inviting women to join her, the girls put their political differences aside to express their support.

On the Facebook group, Templar wrote: 'Girls, let's give the world a good reason to see the unique beauty of Israeli women.

'Regardless of whether they are Jewish, Arab, straight or lesbian – because here, as of now, it doesn't matter.

'Let us show the doubters that our international discourse doesn't depend on governments.'

Templar's plan came as a response to Elmahdy, who posted the image of herself wearing only stockings and red flat shoes on her blog last week. Read on and comment » | Maysa Rawi | Monday, November 21, 2011

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Nackter Protest in Ägypten: Nur mit einer roten Schleife im Haar
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE: 20.11.2011 · Eine ägyptische Studentin fordert die sexuelle Revolution. Mit ihren Nacktbildern im Internet protestiert Alia Magda al Mahdi kurz vor der Wahl gegen die Unterdrückung der Frauen in Ägypten.

Mit roten Lackschuhen, einer roten Schleife im Haar, Nylonstrümpfen und sonst nichts: So präsentiert sich die zwanzig Jahre alte Studentin der Kunst und Medienwissenschaften Alia Magda al Mahdi in ihrem Internetblog, per Twitter und auf Facebook. Das heizt die Stimmung in Ägypten, eine Woche vor der Parlamentswahl, zusätzlich an. Wie nicht anders zu erwarten, reagieren konservative Kräfte auf die Aktion der Studentin mit Drohungen. Liberale distanzieren sich von der Aktion, um nicht in den Ruch zu kommen, Nacktheit zu propagieren. Die Jugendbewegung 6. April, die zum Sturz des Mubarak-Regimes beigetragen hat, teilte mit, dass Alia al Mahdi der Gruppe nicht angehöre, wie es etwa der Sender Al Arabija berichtet hatte. » | Von Michael Hanfeld | Sonntag 20. November 2011

Related articles here, here, here, here, and here

Egyptian Blogger Aliaa Elmahdy: Why I Posed Naked

CNN: Cairo, Egypt -- Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy has become a household name in the Middle East and sparked a global uproar after a friend posted a photo of her naked on Twitter.

The photo, which the 20-year-old former student first posted on her blog, shows her naked apart from a pair of thigh-high stockings and some red patent leather shoes.

It was later posted on Twitter with the hashtag #nudephotorevolutionary. The tweet was viewed over a million times, while Elmahdy's followers jumped from a few hundred to more than 14,000.

Her actions have received global media coverage and provoked outrage in Egypt, a conservative Muslim country where most women wear the veil. Many liberals fear that Elmahdy's actions will hurt their prospects in the parliamentary election next week.

Elmahdy describes herself as an atheist. She has been living for the past five months with her boyfriend, blogger Kareem Amer, who, in 2006 was sentenced to four years in a maximum security prison for criticizing Islam and defaming former president Hosni Mubarak.

Here she talks exclusively to CNN in Cairo about why she posed nude.

CNN: Why did you post a photo of yourself nude photo on Twitter, and why the red high heels and black stockings?

Elmahdy: After my photo was removed from Facebook, a male friend of mine asked me if he may post it on Twitter. I accepted because I am not shy of being a woman in a society where women are nothing but sex objects harassed on a daily basis by men who know nothing about sex or the importance of a woman.

The photo is an expression of my being and I see the human body as the best artistic representation of that. I took the photo myself using a timer on my personal camera. The powerful colors black and red inspire me. » | Mohamed Fadel Fahmy for CNN | Sunday, November 20, 2011

Egypt’s “Nude Photo Revolutionary” Just That, Revolutionary

BIKYAMASR: CAIRO: Despise Aliya Mahdy or not, she has done what few revolutionaries in Egypt have been able to do: take revolutionary action. Her public display of her naked body in a blog post has seen attacks from the conservative Islamists and the liberals alike. Nudity, especially female nudity, leaves people queasy. Had she been a man, would the reaction have been so virulent against her? Doubtful. The man would likely have been praised for his use of his body as expression. Mahdy, unfortunately, is a woman living in Egypt.

Women are objects in many conservatives’ views. Things that can be owned and used for a man’s pleasure when he desires and when he wants. This is why we have seen the growth of polygamy, the shoving aside of a woman’s ability to choose her life’s goals, and the unending “debate” over the causes of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Whether we agree that one’s body should be a form of protest – which so many of Egypt’s liberals disagree with – is irrelevant. The reality is that Mahdy has been able, with her body, [to] debunk all myths of Egyptian liberalism. Her naked image, which has seen over one million hits, has shown that Egypt is not ready for free expression.

Liberal activists online lamented that the 20-year-old university student has “ruined” her life, is “young and doesn’t know what she has done.” But in an inherently conservative society, Mahdy has created something only the truly revolutionary in today’s world can do: showing the hypocrisy of the so-called freedom fighters for expression.

In the ultra-male dominated society of Egypt, women are too often told what they should put on their bodies. Wear the veil, wear loose clothes, don’t wear this, don’t wear that, and so on. Mahdy has shown that nobody has a right to tell her, or other women for that matter, what is appropriate for a woman. Her body is her own and she can do what she likes with it, and that includes putting nothing over top it and publishing it online. It’s her right. Read on and comment » | Joseph Mayton | Thursday, November 17, 2011

Egypt's Naked Blogger Is a Bomb Aimed at the Patriarchs in Our Minds
THE GUARDIAN: By posing naked, Aliaa Mahdy has brilliantly challenged the misogyny and sexual hypocrisy of Egypt's leaders

When a woman is the sum total of her headscarf and hymen – that is, what's on her head and what is between her legs – then nakedness and sex become weapons of political resistance. You can witness how nudity sears through layers of hypocrisy and repression by following Aliaa Mahdy, a 20-year-old Egyptian who lit the fuse of that double-H bombwhen she posted a nude photograph of herself on her blog last week.

It was in Egypt, after all, that the ruling military junta stripped women of both headscarves (detained female activists were made to strip) and hymens when it subjected them to "virginity tests" last March, by which a soldier inserted two fingers into their vaginal opening. What are the military's "virginity tests", but a cheap tactic to humiliate and silence? When sexual assault parades as a test of the "honour" of virginity, then posing in your parents' home in nothing but stockings, red shoes and a red hair clip is an attack towards all patriarchs out there.

Supporters and detractors quickly lined up to comment on her blog, where the counter for pageviews outpaces a pendulum many times over. Far from the immature naïf some have tried to paint her as being, Mahdy knows exactly where it hurts – and kicks. She wrote:

"Put on trial the artists' models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression".

She might have been born 10 years into Hosni Mubarak's rule, but Mahdy understands the way personal freedoms have steadily shrunk in Egypt. The double whammy of military rule – in place since 1952 – along with the growing influence of Islamism, ensured that. Mubarak would fill jails with Islamists, but would fight their ideas not by giving civil and personal liberties room to express themselves, but through conservative clerics employed by the state. When the only two sides fighting are conservative – even if one of them is just conservative in appearance – then everyone loses. And women don't just lose; they're also used as cheap ammunition.

Witness the ultra-conservative Salafi party's use of female candidates on their list: it looks good when you have female candidates; you can tell the feminists who decry your misogynistic ideology to shut up. But the said candidates have no face, and no voice. On election pamphlets, a rose represented one Salafi female candidate – and soon after, the rose was replaced by a picture of the candidate's husband. There are reports that if Salafi women win parliamentary seats, their husbands or a male guardians will speak on their behalf because Salafis consider a woman's voice to be sinful. » | Mona Eltahawy | Friday, November 18, 2011

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Politischer Akt: Nackte Studentin erzürnt Ägypter

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mut oder Leichtsinn? Eine ägyptische Kunststudentin versetzt ihr Land in Aufruhr, weil sie aus politischem Protest nackt im Netz posiert. Kurz vor den Parlamentswahlen gehen jetzt selbst liberale Kräfte auf Distanz zu ihr - und Freunde fürchten um ihre Sicherheit.

Rote Lackschuhe, Nylonstrümpfe, eine Schleife im Haar. Mehr trägt Alia Magda al-Mahdi, 20, Studentin der Kunst- und Medienwissenschaften, nicht auf dem Foto, das in ihrem Heimatland Ägypten ein Tabu gebrochen hat. Ihre provokante Aktion hat ihr Drohungen, aber auch Solidaritätsbekundungen beschert - und die ohnehin gereizte politische Stimmung gut eine Woche vor dem Start der Parlamentswahlen weiter angeheizt.

Das Foto hat die Studentin der Amerikanischen Universität in Kairo in ihrem Blog veröffentlicht, gemeinsam mit weiteren Aktbildern. Eines zeigt einen nackten Mann mit Gitarre und dann wieder Mahdi mit gelben Balken vor Augen, Mund und Scham. Die Rechtecke stünden für "die Zensur unseres Wissens, Ausdrucks und Sexualität", kommentiert sie in dem Blog, das sie mit "Tagebuch einer Rebellin" betitelt hat. Sie wehre sich "gegen eine Gesellschaft von Gewalt, Rassismus, Sexismus, sexueller Belästigung und Heuchelei" - mit einem Aktporträt, das sie nach eigenen Angaben vor Monaten im Haus ihrer Eltern aufgenommen hat.

Für europäische Verhältnisse wirkt das eher altmodisch als revolutionär. Doch in der konservativen ägyptischen Gesellschaft, wo sich Paare in der Öffentlichkeit nicht küssen dürfen und Frauen auf der Straße nicht einmal ihre nackten Arme zeigen, hat die Aufnahme eine Lawine der Entrüstung losgetreten. » | son/dop/AP | Freitag 18. November 2011

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Nude Carla Bruni Fails to Excite Paris Auction
AFP: PARIS — A nude photo of French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, identical to one sold last year for 91,000 dollars, was Friday withdrawn from a Paris auction after bids failed to hit the reserve price.

Bidding for the black and white shot, showing Bruni standing pigeon-toed and covering her crotch with her hands, began at 4,000 euros but reached only 5,800, less than the undisclosed reserve price, the Drouot auction house said. >>> | Friday, November 20, 2009

Pauline Hanson Loses Re-election Bid as Paper Apologies [sic] over Nude Photos
Photo of Pauline Hanson on the dance floor courtesy of The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
TIMESONLINE: The far-right Australian politician Pauline Hanson has received an apology over the publication of 30-year-old raunchy photographs of a near naked woman that local newspapers incorrectly claimed were her, a day after she lost a bid for re-election.

The apology - in which a Sunday newspaper admitted they were “conned” by Jack Johnson, who took the photos and claimed he was a former boyfriend of Ms Hanson - came as the political firebrand lost her bid for a seat in the Queensland parliament, ending her controversial 13-year political career.

Ms Hanson, the former leader of the One Nation political party, had vowed to quit politics for good if she failed to win a seat as an independent in the Queensland parliament during Saturday’s elections.

However on Sunday she declined to rule out running again. “Look, I don’t know,” Ms Hanson said. “I really need to think about this.” >>> Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney | Sunday, March 22, 2009

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH:
Pauline Hanson Nude Photos Were a Con: JACK Johnson, the person at the centre of the controversial Pauline Hanson photographs affair, has emerged as a conman. >>> By Nick Leys Jennifer Sexton | Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Australia) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback – Australia) >>>