For American women, the most harrowing part of a visit to the salon is the dreaded Brazilian wax. In war-torn Baghdad, the stakes are much higher. Iraqi religious extremists have been bombing beauty parlors with ever-increasing frequency because they view well-groomed hair and nails as signs of the corrupting influence of Western culture on their country. Despite the high risk of death, women in Baghdad flock to underground stylists. For ladies in the States, refusing to shave and wax their eyebrows is revolutionary, but in Iraq, where bush is a dirty word, getting dolled up is an act of defiance.

The Associated Press interviewed several Iraqi hairdressers and salon patrons and found that women in Baghdad want to look fabulous, no matter the cost, because "refusing to get a haircut or having their makeup done would be giving in to the violence and despair surrounding them." One of the rogue beauticians, Kifah, whose niece was recently kidnapped by militants, said that the underground beauty parlors give women hope by allowing them to "feel like women, even during the worst tragedy." Something tells me that when Hollywood gets wind of this article, producers will rush to release an action-packed sequel to Beauty Shop where Queen Latifah travels to Iraq and uses her hip hop 'tude and a blow dryer to accomplish far more than any troop surge ever could.

Iraqi Hairdressers Forced Underground - [Associated Press]

Travelers appear top of mind this week, not destinations. The journeys of Daisann McLane, Bill Bryson, Paulina Porizkova, Martin Sargent, celebrity watchers and Dora the Explorer lead off the Zeitgeist.

Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Daisann McLane: ‘Learning Cantonese’ in Hong Kong

Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
Travel Song Medley by Dora the Explorer

Most Read Story
World Hum (this week)
Paulina Porizkova: A Model Traveler

Most Read Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Oscars Tourism: Celebrity Sightings and a Hotel Within Gawking Distance of the Red Carpet

Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
* We like this book.

Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Area-Daily.com Launches

Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Farecast

Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
A Walk in the Woods

Most Dugg Travel Podcast
Digg (current)
Martin Sargent: Web Drifter

The Vloggie Awards for the best video blogs on the Web were handed out in San Francisco on Saturday. The big winner of the night was Alive in Baghdad, which garnered a standing ovation for its Best Vlog win, and also won for Best Group, Political, and Interview vlog. Alive in Baghdad is a collaboration between on-the-ground American and Iraqi correspondents that broadcasts stories of the occupation, told by people who are living through it. Favorite Travel Vlog went to Graham Walker of Travelvlog, whom I’ve covered before. And kudos go to Chuck Olsen of Minnesota Stories, who took home a Vloggie for Best Community Vlog. You can check out some of Chuck’s work on Travelistic, where he goes by the handle MNstories.

Elsewhere:
– List of Vloggie Winners (Scobleizer)

Previously
– User Spotlight: MN Stories
– Video Taxi in Kathmandu

I’m accustomed to seeing TV commercials promoting vacations in places like New Zealand and Canada. So when I saw the commercial on CNN the other day touting travel to Kurdistan, I thought, of course, Kurdistan? Today, the AP explains the commercial’s origins. It turns out a California firm helped make the commercial for the Kurdistan Development Corp.

Raed Jarrar says he was forced to remove a T-shirt with the words “We will not be silent” in both Arabic and English before boarding a Jet Blue flight from New York to California earlier this month. According to a BBC report, Jarrar was told “a number of passengers had complained about his T-shirt—apparently concerned at what the Arabic phrase meant—and asked him to remove it.” Jarrar first refused, then, according to his blog post about the incident, he wore a grey t-shirt with the words “New York” bought for him by a Jet Blue representative. 

All this week Slate is featuring excerpts from Rory Stewart’s new book The Prince of the Marshes, which focuses on his experiences as the Governor of Maysan province in southern Iraq. Stewart is also the author of the acclaimed The Places in Between, a chronicle of his walk across Afghanistan in 2002.