Guardian · 1 day ago

‘If Your Wife Asks You to Change diapers, Change Your wife’: the Arabic Hit Show That Parodies the Patriarchy |...

In a Beirut apartment, a woman in a fake beard barks into a camera, "If your wife asks you to change the diapers, you should change her" - a biting parody of the misogynist influencers gaining followers across the Arab world. Smatouha Minni, a feminist sketch series created by Amanda Abou Abdallah and Maria Elayan, uses satire to dismantle the red-pill ideology and rigid gender roles spreading through Arabic social media, offering young women something they rarely find: feminist conversation rooted in their own collectivist culture rather than Western individualism. The show's power lies not in lecturing but in laughter - "Once we make someone laugh, we have disarmed any potential defensiveness and can introduce new ideas," Abou Abdallah explains. With episodes drawing hundreds of thousands of views and messages from viewers who finally have language to challenge what has harmed them, the series proves that sometimes the sharpest tool against patriarchy is holding up a mirror and letting people see how absurd it looks.