Beauty and the Patriarchy: Ibtisam Mara'ana's Lady Kul El-Arab (2008)

ABSTRACT: Leveraging the discourse of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Ibtisam Ma'arana uses the vehicle of the beauty pageant to consider the pressures on Arab and Druze women in Israeli society. In her documentary Lady Kul El-Arab (2008) she follows Druze Duah Fares as she participates in a small regional Arab contest and then competes in the national Miss Israel event. While the coverage of beauty competitions and the conventions of films and television programs about them have long considered the tension between female self-empowerment and exploitation, this film disrupts the usual narrative, instead drawing greater attention to nationalism and the identity politics which pageants signify. When Fares is forbidden to participate, Mara'ana shows how patriarchal structures employ modes of control and oppression, including threats of ostracization, violence and murder (under the guise of honor killings) to enforce women's submission. As a public and political figure, who has used her own positionality as a Palestinian woman and Israeli citizen to criticize both Israeli authorities and the treatment of women in Arab society, Mara'ana is implicated in the film. This connection is further cemented when she becomes the family's spokesperson three years after the release of the documentary when Fare's sister Jamila (known as Maya) is killed. This article explores the overlapping conflicts that emerge when a woman from a conservative society participates in a pageant and the particular situation of a Druze woman in Israel as depicted in Mara'ana's documentary.