Ikea Israel, Seeking Ultra-Orthodox Customers, Produces Catalog Full Of Dudes
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Ikea, the Swedish affordable-furniture giant (and noted relationship stressor) has managed to offend, this time in Israel. Michele Chabin reports that along with its regular Hebrew-language catalog, the store created a special men-and-boys-only version with an ultra-Orthodox audience in mind.
As opposed as I generally am to rules against images of women and girls, part of me wonders whether we should go with it, in this one case. Ikea’s being marketed as dude-only? A guy thing? Fantastic! Start the women’s strike early and let them go to the store on their own, winding their way through Kiviks and Malms, and deal with the whole shebang — getting the planks home, assembling them into something resembling furniture, and, when the lease is up, selling them on Craigslist to the clever souls wise enough to purchase preassembled Ikea in their neighborhoods.
Let the men have Ikea. It’s all theirs. Let the men cook with the Ikea cookware, and do laundry using those trusty, if rickety, Ikea laundry hampers.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
