The "Boyah" and the "Baby Lady": Queer Mediations in Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid Al Gharaballi's Wawa Series (2011)

Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid al Gharaballi's digital photographs from the series WaWa (2011) engage with gendered and sexual representations of femininity and queerness with reference to the local, namely, Kuwait, as well as the regional, that is, the Arab Gulf and the Arab world at large. In both photographs, references to the Arab Gulf and Kuwait are specifically manifest in the queer. Butch subjectivities are embodied here in a growing phenomenon in the Arab Gulf, known as the boyah subjectivity. "Boyah" is a lexicalization of the English "boy," followed by the Arabic feminine suffix "ah," and it is employed within local popular discourse to refer to the self-stylizations of butch subjectivities (Al-Qasimi 2011, 289-90). Boyah is an outgrowth of an increasingly visible subculture within the Arab Gulf states. The articulation of boyat (plural) in cyberspace, primarily through social networking web sites such as Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace, has created a transnational pan-Gulfian community, with the Internet serving as a mediator for the production of a queer imaginary. While the boyah signifies a shared system of cultural representation within the region of the Arab Gulf, national specificity is often articulated within such queer self-stylizations. For example, on Facebook references to national specificity with boyat users is evinced in users names such as "Boyah Q8 [Kuwait]" and "Jedda Altomboys" (290).

This sentiment is extended by the artists in both their emphatic, as well as subtle, allusions to the local within their representations of the boyah, In WaWa Complex, for example, the cap signifies a common self-stylization of boyat as well as Gulf male youth, especially in its combination with the dishdasha (male national dress). While the dishdasha makes reference to the Arab Gulf, the cap signifies the local, specifically in the Kuwaiti flag and the words, "Kuwait" printed across the side of the cap. The local is further reinforced in Dala3 (in Vegas),¹ where the bracelet worn by the boyah subtly depicts the colors of the Kuwaiti flag herein reinforcing the intersection between the sexual and the national specific to boyah self-stylizations. Masculinity is also manifested through the regional and embodies the theme of consumerism stereotypically associated with men in the Arab Gulf.² This is most emphatically depicted in Dala3 (in Vegas), where the reference to Las Vegas in the title thematically introduces ideologies of consumerism and its associations with gender and sexuality in the Arab Gulf. The sports car and the backdrop of postmodern architecture specific to post-oil Gulf economies herein situate the theme of consumerism in regional and gendered terms, thus aligning masculine consumerism with the queer.

While I argue and demonstrate elsewhere that social networking sites have created a transnational pan-Gulfian queer imaginary (289 - 90), early Middle East media scholars have established that the early 2000s witnessed the role of satellite television as being responsible for creating a pan-Arab, shared cultural space within the Arab world at large. Significantly, socio-cultural constructions of gender and femininity embodied by female television presenters and iconic pop singers, in particular, were upheld and disseminated across the region through this very medium. Central to the WaWa series is the role of the Ghanoojeh, translated by the artists and dubbed as the "Baby Lady."³ The Baby Lady refers to an ideological and socio-cultural construction of an infantilized femininity specific to media personalities in this part of the world. The dissemination of the figure of the Baby Lady is indeed inextricably linked to the media, be it cybertechnology or print media, however, satellite television can arguably be seen as the platform responsible for broadcasting constructions of the Baby Lady across the region. Such constructions are indeed reinforced through the pop musical industry, and its market in the Arab world, with its growing popularity of music videos. The transmission of music videos on satellite music channels at the beginning of the century, primarily, as well as the Internet, more recently, with sites such as YouTube and its circulation of music videos, is thus...