I fear for the safety of every woman involved in this show. The models, the director, and any other woman even remotely associated with it. I don't think the time is right for this.

I hope I am wrong.

This really IS amazing! This wouldn't have even been a dream a few years back.

Seems we ARE making some headway in Afghanistan anyway.

I thought modeling was degrading and exploitative, especially of young women.

"Child labor never looked so corrosively chic. Not only are fashion models getting younger (despite proposals for a minimum age put forth by the British Fashion Council and the Council of Fashion Designers of America), but their bodies are being ravaged by more than just malnutrition."

And the director of this slave auction is only 18! Oppressive and exploitative. I would think Ms. Clark-Flory would side with the muslim clerics who disapprove.

There are better ways to be liberated than to join the exploitative, superficial, soul-crushing fashion industry.

I'm happy to see women stepping forward and asserting their rights in the "new" Afghanistan. I hope that in that country modeling doesn't mean undernourished 18 year olds in skimpy clothing. After all, modeling by definition does not need to mean exploitation, it just so happens that's how we do it in the west. It may be an extreme way to "take off the burqa" but sometimes extreme measures have to be taken in order to advance a cause and get change rolling. I do hope it's safe.

Good news little ladies of Afghanistan, you get to move from a burqua to a bikini. Things are really looking up as I am sure that being in a beauty contest can only mean you will no longer be exploited and degraded.

Parson Jim writes, "I would think Ms. Clark-Flory would side with the muslim clerics who disapprove."

But can't we disapprove in a way that doesn't side with the clerics? Isn't there room for enlightenment that sides with neither "Women's bodies are shameful, it's wicked and violence-provoking for men to see them, and these girls ought to be punished," OR "Woo-hoo! Superficial and implausible standards of beauty for women everywhere!"

This is a step somewhere for Afghan women, but I don't think it's forward, necessarily.

1. It's trading one manifestation of objectification and denial of women's whole selves for another.

2. It sides with the clerics. It says that modeling, exposing one's body for approval and profit, is what "progress" is about. That the opposite of forcibly keeping women covered and controlled really is the worst of what heathen America has to offer by way of gender roles and women's place in the working world.

I'll never deny anyone's right to use her talent as she sees fit, but I'm afraid for everyone involved, and I seriously wonder that they couldn't come up with something more constructive and enlightening for everyone.

(And I'm not and will never say that modelling is inherently bad bad bad--obviously we need people to show us how clothes look on real bodies--only that the way it's been turned into a competitive sport in superficiality in the first world is disgusting.)

"I thought modeling was degrading and exploitative, especially of young women."

Modeling in and of itself isn't degrading and exploitative, but the way that models are often treated by the industry is. We would have to know more about the Afghan modeling industry before we can make a judgment of it.

This whole endeavor (the "fashion" world) is rather vapid, but if they don't take it too seriously, it might be subversive in all the right ways. I'm always a little worried about the backlash: this could help further the impression that "Western Women" are all tanorexic sluts and such.

Still, just like those much-lauded beauty academies, this could be a net positive.

Seriously. I'm not trying to be disingenuous. There's a modelling industry in Afghanistan? If this one TV show has so much backlash, how do they manage to maintain a whole industry? Does the rest of the industry also have to deal with these kinds of threats?

Sociologists have know for decades now that in countries where the standard of living begins to rise the first thing that men buy with disposable income is cigarettes. The first thing the women buy is cosmetics. This is pretty much universal.

And the rest of her is down the street. We blowin up.

stripping off the burqa to strut the catwalk half-naked is hardly what i , and it seems the majority of the posts, see as an advancement for women in afghanistan. why is exhibitionism equated with female empowerment? i consider this a perfect example of how some women, nevermind those crazy clerics, perpetuate the objectification of female bodies.

On a much more encouraging note, the show seems to have been sparked by a progressive, up-and-coming generation of young Afghan women.

I wish you writers at Broadsheet would take the trouble to crack open a book or two about Afghanistan before you write about the country.

"The Tragedy of Afghanistan" by Raja Anwar gives an extremely detailed history of the time when socialists ran the country. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to continue writing about this country.

Now read this:

Afghanistan was once a socialist country. Afghanistan has had at least three generations of progressive women so far.

The problem is, as always -- as is true in America also -- the progressives constitute a minority. They're the urban educated elite.

The battle in Afghanistan has always been between the urban well-educated elite and the rural less-educated majority.

Mazar-i-Sharif is in the north of Afghanistan. Mazar was the capital of the anti-Taliban insurgency led by Massoud, the Lion of Panshjer, who was assassinated by the Taliban the day before 9/11.

Mazar-i-Sharif is not exclusively Pushtun as is the south of Afghanistan. This is an ethnically mixed area with Turkmens, Tadjiks and Uzbeks living alongside Pushtuns.

So the very strict Pushtun interpretation of Islam is not the predominant way of life there.

By the way -- another thing for which Mazar-i-Sharif is famous for is cannabis. There's even a strain of cannabis named for Mazar-i-Sharif.

The Sufi saint Baba Ku, who taught the Afghan tribes the secret of using hashish to cure the plague, hailed from this region, as did the Sufi poet people know today by the name Rumi.

So this event is happening in the most liberal region in all of Afghanistan. That doesn't mean it's going to be tolerated anywhere else and that doesn't mean there is an entire generation of young Afghan women who are as progressive as the women being reared in the historically liberal and ethnically mixed north.