I must confess my knowledge of Jordan is pretty limited and, to my shame, the only time I’ve ever heard of Queen Rania was in a list of powerful women I read in a magazine (while waiting to get a haircut I think); at the time I was mildly surprised to see a Jordanian woman is any sort of position of power – and it’s exactly that sort of attitude Queen Rania has apparently been trying to overcome with her YouTube channel (and lots of other stuff, too).  Still, until yesterday I’d never actually seen one of her videos until I was sent her witty acceptance video for YouTube’s first YouTube Visionary Award:

If her vision was to offer a wake-up call to lazy stereotypes about women in Muslim societies, then I’d say she achieved her aim admirably.  To see an example of her frank, direct and very engaging video blogging style, check out ‘Jordan’s Queen Rania on Arab women’; not only does she have a really convincing presence on camera, but (unlike most politicians’ for example) she leaves her YouTube comments enabled and she actually responds to many of them – that’s what participatory culture is all about!