Saudi Arabia women drive cars in protest at ban

Women in Saudi Arabia have been openly driving cars in defiance of an official ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

The direct action has been organised on social network sites, where women have been posting images and videos of themselves behind the wheel.

The Women2Drive Facebook page said the direct action would continue until a royal decree reversed the ban.

Last month, a woman was arrested after uploading a video of herself driving.

Manal al-Sherif was accused of "besmirching the kingdom's reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion", but was released after 10 days having promised not to drive again.

Campaigners have not called for a mass protest - which would be illegal - but have asked women who have foreign driving licences to drive themselves as they go about their daily life.

"All that we need is to run our errands without depending on drivers," said one woman in the first film posted in the early hours of Friday morning.

The film showed the unnamed woman talking as she drove to a supermarket and parking.

"It is not out of love for driving or traffic or the experience. All this is about is that if I wanted to go to work, I can go. If I needed something I can go and get it.

"I think that society is ready to welcome us."

Another protester said she drove around the streets of Riyadh for 45 minutes "to make a point".

"I took it directly to the streets of the capital," said Maha al-Qahtani, a computer specialist at the Ministry of Education.

Religious fatwa

On Twitter, Mrs Qahtani described the route she had taken around the city with her husband, saying: "I decided that the car for today is mine."

Her husband said she was carrying her essential belongings with her and was "ready to go to prison without fear", AFP news agency reported.

One woman who asked not to be named told the BBC driving was often considered to be "something really minor".

"It's not one of your major rights. But we tell them that even if you give us all the basic and big rights, that you are claiming are more important than driving, we can't enjoy practising those rights because the mobility is not there.

"We can't move around without a male."

The motoring ban is not enforced by law, but is a religious fatwa imposed by conservative Muslim clerics. It is one of a number of severe restrictions on women in the country.

Supporters of the ban say it protects women and relieves them of the obligation to driver, while also preventing them from leaving home unescorted or travelling with an unrelated male.

But the men and women behind the campaign - emboldened by uprisings across the Middle East and Arab world - say they hope the ban will be lifted and that other reforms will follow.

Amnesty International has said the Saudi authorities "must stop treating women as second-class citizens", describing the ban as "an immense barrier to their freedom of movement".

The last mass protest against the ban took place in 1980, when a group of 47 women were arrested for driving and severely punished - many subsequently lost their jobs.

The women were angered that female US soldiers based in the kingdom after the war with Kuwait could drive freely while they could not.

In appreciation: Farrah Fawcett

Farrah Fawcett's death in June was eclipsed by that of Michael Jackson, who died hours later. She was the style icon for generations of women, says Sasha Wilkins, executive style editor of Wall Street Journal magazine.

The Jennifer Aniston of her day, Farrah Fawcett became the female icon of a generation. To appreciate her influence on 1970s style, pick up any family photo album from around that time.

At least half the women inside will be wearing high-waisted denim flares, with a tight bra-less T-shirt crowned by "the Farrah" - a confection of sun-kissed, flicked, feathered and layered bouffant hair that looked natural, but owed its volume to a strafing of industrial quantities of hairspray.

The key to the appeal of her wholesome good looks was its unthreatening obtainability. To men she was the girl next door, the apogee of natural, unaffected beauty. To women she represented an achievable, relaxed image.

It's difficult for children that came of age in the 1990s to understand the appeal of unadorned, unmanipulated beauty. To them Charlie's Angels doesn't automatically mean Farrah and her cast mates, Jacqueline and Kate, but instead Cameron, Lucy and Drew. Where we had Farrah and her hair, they had Demi and her plastic surgery.

But the 1970s was a very different time. Until Farrah and her fellow Charlie's Angels blazed on to British television screens, female British TV icons were terribly posh: Dame Diana Rigg, Joanna Lumley, Honor Blackman. Fantasy figures, sure, but no everyday bloke honestly thought he would have stood a chance. The Angels became the popular antidote to the previously prevailing stylish but unapproachable female.

No gadgets, just babes

Charlie's Angels first appeared in 1976 as a TV movie. Farrah, along with Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, played sassy private investigators for a detective agency run by Charles Townsend, a reclusive multi-millionaire whom the women had never met.

Townsend referred to his employees as angels, a term that would never have got past the PC police in the 21st Century. The movie was so successful that a series was promptly commissioned, and TV history was made.

Given the nature of our multi-media, multichannel viewing experience nowadays, it's easy to forget the vast impact of television in the 1970s. A show like Charlie's Angels dominated the television landscape and became the cultural reference for an entire decade.

It's no wonder Farrah and her cast mates became international superstars - they WERE the show. The Charlie's Angels of the 1970s is a reflection of a less sophisticated time. No technology, no CGI, no go-go-gadgets to distract the viewer from the pulchritudinous babes who carried the story.

Farrah, who concealed a sharp brain and quick wit behind the pouffed-up hair, told TV Guide in a 1977 interview: "When the show was number three, I thought it was our acting. When we got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra."

The real key to Farrah's resonance with men and with women was her styling. In an age where the celebrity stylist was yet to make its mark, Farrah was just herself. With her wide, ultra-white toothy grin, fluffy hair, jeans and sneakers she was the epitome of Californian wholesomeness. The open-necked, rolled sleeved gingham shirts, waisted jumpsuits and silky slip dresses looked simple and uncontrived.

The hair was a different matter. Men may have been taken in by its artless bounce, but women knew better: the Farrah took time to achieve: "I'd curl, pin, curl, pin. And when it was done, I took the pins out, turned the hair upside down and brushed it out so you wouldn't have a 'set' look," her hairdresser Allen Edwards told a journalist.

But it was the poster that made Farrah into a global sensation. She was already well-known as a model before landing Charlie's Angels, and the poster, a collaboration between Fawcett and the photographer, was shot at her home before she was cast on the show.

The success of Charlie's Angels sent sales of the poster into the millions. It's been estimated that it sold as many as 12 million copies, and Farrah received a royalty on each one. She was paid $5,000 (£3,123) per episode for the one season she appeared on the show, but is believed to have racked up over $400,000 (£249,801) in poster royalties.

Farrah did her own make-up, wore her own swimsuit, picked out six frames from the 40 rolls of film shot on the day, marking out as her favourite the image that finally became the poster. She knew how to market herself.

"The reason that the all-American boy prefers beauty to brains is that he can see better than he can think."

When Farah Fawcett died this year, the dreams of the 1970s died with her.