Nameless and faceless, a number of dolls recently made by Andy McMurtrie are adorned with bright blue bras.

The Lincoln resident crafted the dolls last week after reading a Dec. 29 Washington Post article, “The blue bra revolution,” by Sally Quinn.

“The article was about a young Egyptian woman who was accosted by the military and beaten badly,” McMurtrie said. “When they ripped off her abaya, they find she has a bright blue bra on with her jeans. It was shocking to them.”

In her Washington Post article, Quinn called the Egyptian woman’s blue bra “the ultimate symbol of women’s power” and it is a “bold statement” of “women’s sexuality.”

McMurtrie said the woman in the blue bra’s “days begin and end with a dampened spirit.”

“The blue bra gives her a feeling of value for her beauty, which is not allowed to be seen,” McMurtrie said. “It’s her own small ritual, a celebration of the real woman inside of her. It gives her some kind of control over her life instead of just powerlessness.”

The dolls made by McMurtrie are “blue bra dolls” and the purpose behind them is to “represent all of those women that are repressed.”

“There are lots of terrible places in the world doing terrible things to women,” McMurtrie said. “I made the blue bra dolls in order to draw attention to these women’s plight.”

The dolls cost $18, with half of the proceeds donated to a woman’s shelter and the other half going to materials to make new dolls, McMurtrie said.

“I think, if you pay for something, you attach more value to it so when you look at the little doll, you will be more likely to remember all those women and send a little prayer or good thoughts of encouragement to them,” McMurtrie said. “I’d like to keep those blue bra moments alive.”

McMurtrie said her interpretation of a blue bra moment is “when a woman thinks I am a woman, I am valuable and I have worth.”

There is a reason behind the dolls being nameless, faceless and colorless.

“I don’t want to attach a personality to her. I want her to represent all women,” McMurtrie said.

The News Messenger spoke with Quinn last Thursday by phone.

“I find this very exciting,” said Quinn about the blue bra dolls. “I think it’s great because that’s exactly the reaction that I wanted. I like that she’s donating half of the money to the cause.”

When Quinn saw the Egyptian woman with the blue bra on the news, she “just gasped.”

“It just took my breath away to see this woman who had been totally covered in this abaya and had on this totally sexy blue bra,” Quinn said. “(It said) you can cover me up but you can’t take away who I am.”

McMurtrie’s crafting of the blue bra dolls is “exactly the reaction I wanted,” Quinn said.

“I can’t tell you how much reaction I’ve gotten from that place, from people all over the world, who want to start movements,” Quinn said. “One of the major national department stores sent a letter around to their intimate apparel departments saying, ‘We’ve got to stock blue bras because we’ve gotten so many requests.’”

Quinn plans to start a website where “we are going to start putting up all kinds of stories like this.”

“One of the things the website is going to do is aggregate stories about atrocities that are committed against women but also good stories,” Quinn said.

McMurtrie said Kathy Dorsey, owner of Wardrobe (517 G St.), offered to sell the blue bra dolls in her shop.

Like McMurtrie, Dorsey said, she “supports the cause” because it “calls attention and raises awareness about women’s issues not only in Egypt but the Middle East and around the world.”

“To me, it’s interesting that it’s a bra because the women’s movement was about burning the bra,” Dorsey said. “We are again talking about the bra, and once again, it is synonymous with the women’s struggle.”

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Blue bra dolls

Where: Wardrobe, 517 G St.

Cost: $18. Half of that amount donated to area women’s shelter.

For more information: Andy McMurtrie at andymcmurtrie@aol.com