A pop culture paradox: Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen as a Barbie
BarbieCollector.com has announced the arrival of the Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen clone, but replicating the character as a Barbie doll feels at odds with the very essence of the character’s power.
A "Barbie-fied" Katniss: Progressive or Regressive?
Joining the ever-growing pop culture collection, the Katniss emulation is sold alongside other blockbuster-inspired dolls: classic favorites like the belly-baring I Dream of Jeannie doll, royalty replicas of Wedding Will and Kate, and the ubiquitous Twilight duo. Part of this assortment also surprisingly included female versions of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.
So of course the powers that be at mega-toy-giant Mattel know a good business decision when they see one, and The Hunger Games is no exception. To be fair, the actual doll version has Katniss dressed in her Games attire, her braid trailing down her back, and a mini Mockingjay pin affixed to her lapel. She even has her signature bevy of arrows slung across her back, bow and quiver in hand, boot-clad, and poised for action.
With a purchasing limit of five and a price tag of $29.95, the doll isn’t the doe-eyed damsel typically associated with the traditional Barbie. But I am still skeptical as to whether morphing Katniss into a Barbie reduces all the empowerment and aspiration her character represents. Continue reading
Barbie goes bald… but don’t tell the “normal” kids.
Oh, Barbie. Such a complicated relationship you have with women. More than any other doll, Barbie is considered the iconic American toy of girls in the U.S., and is most well known by her critics as not being able to stand up on her own two feet if she were a real woman. Now, she’s going bald.
Hi, I'm Barbie. As usual, I remain the pinnacle of beauty that everyone wants to emulate.
In recent years, Mattel has tried to tackle the claim that Barbie isn’t a particularly great role model by giving the doll a series of “careers” that are fairly diverse – engineer, teacher, architect, news anchor, dentist, vet – but of course, Barbie always remains looking very much same. Extremely skinny, with long flowing blonde locks, huge blue eyes decorated with sparkly makeup, and a plethora of fashions to help – of course – make her over! (Warning – I like the color pink, but the Barbie.com web site is… overwhelmingly, dauntingly pink.)
But apparently, one thing – just one, mind you – about Barbie is going to change. After a campaign launched on Facebook to make a bald Barbie received over 150,000 “likes,” Mattel agreed to make a bald Barbie. The description of the group says that the goal of a bald Barbie is to “help young girls who suffer from hair loss due to cancer treatments, alopecia, or trichotillomania,” as well as “for young girls who are having trouble coping with their mothers’ hair loss from chemo.”
Barbie: The Young Girls’ Ultimate Role Model?
Especially in this day and age, every young girl should have a role model. They need someone to look up to — someone who will validate their dreams, inspire their hearts, and represent all the positive, healthy ideals life has to offer. My mother is my role model, and so when I saw this commercial the other day, I assumed it was a shout-out to all the hardworking mothers setting their daughters on the right track. After all, at such a young age, who can inspire young girls to “go to the moon”, “dance”, and “teach the next generation”?
Apparently, Barbie can.
There are so many problems with this commercial. First of all, the ad implies — and even encourages young girls to believe — that it’s perfectly fine to idolize a 11.5 inch, unhealthily disproportionate doll. Last time I checked, living, breathing, animate role models served this purpose much better. What are we doing to the future generation when we suggest that they find solace, comfort, and inspiration in the domestic comfort of a Barbie? We should be pushing young girls’ dreams outside of the playpen, into the world, where they will be surrounded by real, healthy women who actually have their best interests at heart.
When the commercial first comes on, you think, “Finally! An ad empowering young women to break the stereotypes and have a profound influence on the world.” They want to be astronauts, bakers, and ballerinas — right on! But then we realize their dreams are being inspired by a Barbie doll. This comes as an unexpected shock; I know my initial reaction was to laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of the correlation! Suddenly, the girls’ hopes are trivialized because they are being attributed to a bastardized representation of what a woman ought to be.
Of course, the commercial wouldn’t be complete without the ever-present reminder that Barbie is first and foremost a doll desired for her attractiveness. “She has awesome style!” says one of the featured young actresses. We’ve all seen the horrifying infographics of Barbie’s severely screwed up proportions, and we can’t forget that even though Barbie has had 125 careers, she’s still showing young girls an unrealistic representation of the female body.
Who wouldn’t want Barbie as their best friend?!
Some argue that by promoting Barbie’s workforce-related success, perhaps Mattel is attempting to change the image of the Barbie doll. But do the pros of this new Barbie image outweigh the cons of the “ideal” body image portrayed by the doll? If young girls are idolizing Barbie for her career, how can we be sure they won’t idolize her in terms of her body?
My advice? Change the image of the Barbie doll by changing the Barbie doll — chest size, waist-to-hip ratio, and all.
- Hailey
These are not troll dolls
Do these look like trolls to you? Yeah, me neither.
I would really appreciate it if corporate America would stop revamping and sexing up my childhood memories.
Troll dolls are supposed to be ugly, pudgy, wild-haired, naked fairytale characters that give you good luck when you rub their jewels, or (if you have the originals with no jewels), are just supposed to be fun to play with or collect.
New trolls look like skinny, weird, cat-people or malformed anime girls.
Are they supposed to be teenagers or tweens? Why?
Why all of a sudden give a gender to something that never really had one?
I suppose that as they got more popular in the ’80s and ’90s, trolls were given outfits, but you could put any outfit on any troll, and it would automatically change their perceived gender. Continue reading
Stop turning girlhood into a product!
What does an ideal girl look like? Is she blonde, with a perfect figure and a Chihuahua in her purse? Or is she the brunette with the looks of Megan Fox? Is her favorite physical activity shopping? Media outlets are busy promoting such stereotypes about girlhood. The logic is simple: when girlhood is mainly about looking good, companies that cater to such a “need” will profit.
For instance, toy companies seem to be selling social identities rather than just toys. Girl toys in the Toys R Us online catalog for 2-year-olds include play houses, oven makers and newborn doll strollers–but boy toys include trains, walker pianos and fire engines. Neurobiologist and author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain Lise Eliot argues that the brains of boys and girls are not different at birth. Yet, Toys R Us and the plethora of toy companies would rather defy science and create such gender differences in an attempt to maximize sales. The message they give to our girls is that decorative and homemaking skills must become a priority very early on in life.
It all started in the 1980s when marketing expert James McNeal suggested that targeting products to children at birth would improve customer loyalty. Basically, the idea was that a consumer at birth would be a consumer for life. Companies have faithfully taken his advice. Juliet Schor, author of the book Born to Buy, explains that marketers are eager to target children under age 8 because they cannot spot the commercial intent of advertisements. Instead, kids consider ads information outlets! Continue reading
Tween Dora inspires girls to explore…the mall
She looks empty inside.
Dora the Explorer’s new “tween” look has caused quite a stir. The new Dora seems to be telling little girls that looks are, in fact, very important. She is also suggesting that girls should be more interested in styling their hair than in having adventures.
Luckily, the original, adventurous young Dora will live on in her television show. The tween Dora is being marketed as a doll that can hook up to computers to interact with her web site, doralinks.com. The site and doll will officially launch on September 29th, but until then, visitors to the teaser site can watch the Dora links commercial, which you might have seen on television: Continue reading
Black Barbie Dolls Leave Much to Be Desired
As we found out from The Root, Mattel is releasing a new line of Barbie dolls that are getting a lot of attention. The new line, called “So In Style,” or “S.I.S.” are supposed to be African-American and to have more “authentic” facial features. The S.I.S. dolls are sold in pairs, with one adult doll and one young doll, in order to model a mentor relationship.
What makes this new line of black dolls interesting is that each character has a different skin tone, representing the variety of skin tones that black women have. Also, the dolls have straight, wavy, and curly hair. Props to Mattel for including these differences, but while it may be a step forward in representing racial diversity, it is far from far enough.
Come On Barbie, Let’s Go Party!
Drowning Barbie
This year Barbie is having her 50th birthday, and while Mattel is rolling in profits, praise, and some continued criticism, I plan on remembering my own Barbie the last time I saw her-drowning in a pool when I was 10. Continue reading
Strawberry Tall-Thinner-and-Straight-Haired Cake?
I don’t know about you, but it really annoys me when ’80s cartoon characters are revamped using today’s technology. Take Alvin and the Chipmunks the movie. Modern day technology took the “cuteness” out of Alvin, Simon and Theodore and made them look all real and chipmunk-like. Yah yah, maybe its more “realistic” but I prefer them the 80′s way.
Of course nothing — and I mean nothing — takes the cake (pun intended) after what I saw yesterday. Continue reading
Please don’t help your 6-year-old be sexy.
When my friend’s three-year-old daughter answered the door wearing some kind of brownish makeup smeared all over her face, her mom and I had a good laugh. She had done it herself; we joked that she missed a couple spots, and the little girl busted out a belly laugh that almost knocked her over.
Most of us have played in our mom’s makeup. But yesterday on Salon’s Broadsheet, Tracy Clark-Flory commented on some real, high-quality makeup for 6- to 9-year-old girls that Mattel and Bonne Bell are going to be releasing in 2008. Continue reading