The first media portrayals of North African women took place in the nineteenth century following the colonization of the region. These portrayals were informed by the colonial attitude toward the colonized and reflected the colonizer's cultural hegemony. The first soldiers in the colonial armies produced images of exotic lands, which together with the images propagated by Antoine Galland's translation of the Thousand and One Nights (1701– 17), amalgamated into an image of North African women as exotic objects of curiosity well hidden in oriental harems.

Women became the favorit…