Andi Davids, global head of strategy at branding agency Bulletproof Brands, said that Barbie’s relevance has persisted through the years because the brand roots itself in the fundamental human experience of imagining what people will be when they grow up. While Barbie is an aspirational figure, she has also been a vessel for kids to project their own desires and goals. “On the other hand, Barbie is celebrated as the ultimate ‘girl boss’ who has done every job imaginable.” “On the one hand, she is seen as representing unrealistic patriarchal beauty expectations,” McCann said. Still, “Barbie continues to be a fraught icon,” Hannah McCann, senior lecturer of cultural studies at the University of Melbourne, said in an email. Another study, published in 2016 in the journal Body Image, analyzed the responses of 112 girls between 6 and 8 years old on Long Island who played with dolls of different body shapes, and found that more girls who played with thin dolls like Barbie experienced discrepancies between their actual versus ideal body sizes. One study found that if Barbie were a real person with her proportions, she’d have to walk on all fours. Barbie’s proportions have often been criticized for being unrealistic, with long legs and a petite waist. She is seen as the idealized woman created to mold girls in the shape of the male gaze. Since her inception, Barbie has been shrouded in duality. ![]() Since her debut, Barbie has had more than 250 jobs, including as an astronaut landing on the moon four years before Neil Armstrong. Part of the appeal of the doll was the various outfits and occupations offered by Mattel. ![]() She was created by Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel, after Handler watched her daughter play with paper dolls.īarbie has had every job imaginable, from doctor to model to ballerina. As of Wednesday evening, “Barbie” had earned an 89% on the movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.īarbara Millicent Roberts, better known as Barbie, first debuted in 1959 at the American Toy Fair in New York City, as an 11-inch blond with a rosy pout, according to. The crux of the message is that women should have the autonomy to be what they want to be without having to conform to the patriarchy’s ideals.Īs the first crowds poured into theaters across the country to watch “Barbie,” so too did the first reviews. ![]() ![]() At one point, Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, wanders into a school and is confronted by a tween, Sasha, who lays into her, calling her a “bimbo.” Throughout the course of the film, both Barbie and Sasha come to terms with the many dimensions of womanhood, accepting that women can be hyperfeminine, while simultaneously being “weird, dark and crazy,” as Sasha’s mother puts it. The film frequently touches on the nuances of being a woman. While Ken’s “himbo” character is the source of much of the film’s comedy, “Barbie” gives Ken humanity and vulnerability, all with the intent of showing how his character also suffers under the pressures of the patriarchy. As Barbie makes her way in the real world, she must grapple with the overwhelming emotion and discomfort of being human, as well as a patriarchal system that would make her a secondary character in her own world. Shrouded in Barbie’s iconic, hyperstylized pink, the movie takes on serious and systemic societal issues, examining the complexity and contradictions of modern womanhood.
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