Pakistani Muslim cartoonist tackles social and political issues

by: Salaam

Sat Oct 17, 2009 at 19:41:09 PM EDT

Pakistan can be difficult terrain for a female Muslim cartoonist whose alter ego, Gogi, has comments in the bubble above her head on everything from male chauvinism to suicide bombers.

Gogi is a long-lashed, short-coiffed, polka dot-wearing, pixie-faced modern Pakistani woman. She is a bit like "Blondie" and a bit like Oprah - except devoutly Muslim.

Gogi creator Nigar Nazar, the first and, as far as she knows, "only woman cartoonist of Pakistan and very likely the entire Muslim world," says Gogi represents the educated and self-confident urban Pakistani.

Gogi is mostly "on the receiving end of the joke that is life," Nazar says. She deflects the onslaught with womanly humor.

"Gogi is that ray of hope in a male-dominated country where she has to brave it . . . with a tough exterior while not losing her feminine grace, charm and intelligence," Nazar said.
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Nazar, whose father worked in the foreign service, spent several years in America as a young girl.

"It was long enough to get me hooked on comics," she said.

Gogi began as a daily comic strip in a Pakistan newspaper called The Sun in 1970, when Nazar was 22. She also animated a cartoon for Karachi Television about that time.

Nazar later freelanced for The Herald monthly before publishing books of Gogi cartoons, the first in 1975.

Gogi's style is usually gentle. She points out in one strip that the traditional headscarf, the chaddar, actually has advantages, such as hiding one from creditors.

Gogi and friend once remarked on the disparate reaction to male births and female births. When a son is born, the father passes out cigars. When a daughter is born, a father simply passes out. "That was my first meaningful cartoon," Nazar said.
Newspaper editors in Pakistan are not always receptive to Gogi as a mouthpiece for modern urban women, she said.

"I don't do political cartoons until I get very, very angry," Nazar said. "And then they don't get published. Now I can put them on my website" - gogicomics.com.

Story here.