Friday Middle Eastern pop star blogging, cont'd...

Yesterday was Gulben Ergen's birthday, so it struck me as appropriate to picture her here today. Yes, she's also a Turkish pop singer, like Yildiz Tilbe and Ziynet Sali. ( I'm beginning to think that a. all Turkish women are gorgeous, and b. several million of them, at the very least, are working on their demo tapes.)

Of course it would probably be nice if the uniformly positive, media-pop-culture image a society likes to present to itself and the rest of the world were accurate. But needless to say, large numbers of women in many middle eastern countries don't have the breadth of opportunities and freedoms that wealthy ones do, and this is true in the more secular ones too. But I imagine it is more strarkly true in the countries run by the religious nuts.

But it's Gulben's birthday, and we shouldn't dwell on these things. Who knows, the real Gulben, behind the pop facade, may herself dwell on them too.



Gulben in wicker chair photo courtesy haydi.net



Gulben album cover courtesy kanal.com