Return of the odalisque

This past June, I blogged about the burqas and burqa-like garments that I'd noticed in American women's magazines. Posing as a social psychologist, I half-seriously proposed that Americans might be "identifying with the aggressor" (radical Islamists) in a neurotic effort to avoid punishment (another terrorist attack on American soil). Oddly enough, I only received reader emails agreeing with this far-out proposition. Now I've gathered more evidence.

Here's a TSE ad from the September 07 issue of Town & Country:

Here's another TSE ad, from the September 07 issue of Harper's Bazaar:

Also, there's a new wrinkle! I found the following ad circular for Keri Renewal Serum for Dry Skin inside my Boston Sunday Globe (or was it my New York Times) yesterday:

I wonder what made Keri decide it was OK to use an odalisque -- a Turkish harem concubine -- in their ad? Like the odalisques of Boucher, Ingres, Leighton, Renoir, and other 19th century European painters, Keri depicts a nominally eastern (Muslim) woman lying on her side, on display for the spectator. In fact, the ad is an explicit reference to Ingres's infamous "Grand Odalisque" (1814):

Why use a Muslim sex slave to sell skin lotion to American women? There's no rational explanation. But perhaps there's an irrational one. If you know what I mean.