The Sept 13 & 20 issue of Newsweek Pakistan is drawing all kinds of attention on the Internet, largely thanks to a cover featuring a pair of tampons lit as if they are sticks of dynamite:
Twitter's response was typically hyperbolic:
This is the single most insane magazine cover I have ever seen. http://t.co/bqgRKxghps #NewsweekPakistan
- Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) September 25, 2013
Is it...is it even real? http://t.co/rt4rWpruEK
- Marin Cogan (@marincogan) September 25, 2013
- Sophie Gilbert (@sophieGG) September 25, 2013
Of course, using a controversial cover image to grab readers and attention is nothing new in the media, and it's especially nothing new for Newsweek.
Newsweek
As Buzzfeed notes, the cover story focuses on the rise of female suicide bombers in a number of countries, including Pakistan, Iraq, Chechnya and Palestine and is actually pretty interesting. It goes into detail about how organizations such as the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda use women for operations where "a beared man with wild eyes could be a dead giveaway."
The use of female suicide bombers is hardly a new phenomenon, either in the Muslim world or elsewhere, according to Newsweek Pakistan. The New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism portal told them that at least six of the 371 suicide attacks in Pakistan since May 2002 were carried out by women. In addition, 30 percent of the 200-plus suicide bombings by now-defunct Sri Lankan militant organization, Tamil Tigers, were carried out by women.
"Terrorist organizations know that female bombers generate eight times more media attention than male ones," Mia Bloom, author of Bombshell: the Many Faces of Women Terrorists, told Newsweek Pakistan.