{"id":68281,"date":"2015-11-04T12:36:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68281"},"modified":"2015-11-16T13:07:36","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T18:07:36","slug":"is-barbie-a-feminist-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/11\/04\/is-barbie-a-feminist-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Barbie a feminist now?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Barbie has never exactly been a feminist icon, but last\u00a0week Mattel was\u00a0celebrated for a new\u00a0advertising campaign that some say empowers young girls. In the \u201cImagine the Possibilities\u201d\u00a0commercial, the viewer sees young girls in professional settings \u2014 a science museum, a\u00a0veterinary office, a soccer field \u2014 where they lead adults as if they are the ones in charge. At the\u00a0end of the ad, the scene shifts to a girl acting out her role as a college professor with Barbie dolls\u00a0in her bedroom. Across the screen flashes, \u201cWhen a girl plays with Barbie, she imagines\u00a0everything she can become.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l1vnsqbnAkk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But does\u00a0the Barbie commercial really send an affirmative message about\u00a0women in male-dominated\u00a0occupations? And how does it stack up against actual Barbie products?<\/p>\n<p>To answer the first\u00a0question, I invite you to watch the commercial with a special focus on how the\u00a0adult observers treat the young girls who are acting out their career fantasies. From the very first\u00a0scene, everyone the girls encounter has the same reaction: laughter. The idea that these girls can\u00a0fill the roles they\u2019re imagining strikes the adults as so silly that the only complete sentence any\u00a0of the adults says to these girls is, \u201cYou\u2019re kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The girls are cute or funny, but never a\u00a0force to be taken seriously. While the storyline may seem to encourage women\u2019s participation in\u00a0the labor force, the laughter throughout the commercial\u00a0suggests that the girls&#8217; aspirations are seen as adorable or silly.<\/p>\n<p>Is it just because they&#8217;re kids? I don&#8217;t think so.\u00a0Compare the Barbie ad to toy commercials\u00a0that target boys. The clearest example I found was the commercial for the i-Que Robot. Like in the\u00a0Barbie commercial, children take the central speaking roles as adults react to them. Unlike the\u00a0Barbie commercial, these adults appear captivated and impressed by the boys\u2019 pitches about their\u00a0toy. By the end of the commercial, it\u2019s easy to imagine these boys as successful salesmen or\u00a0engineers, everyone has already treated them as such.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Vzo7rZXIRGs\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Does Barbie back up their message, though, with actual opportunities for play? My quick search on Amazon for the phrase\u00a0\u201cBarbie office\u201d was pretty disappointing. The commercial, in other words, is disingenuous; it&#8217;s out of line with the actual Barbie products available for purchase. After limiting the results to only those produced by\u00a0Mattel or Barbie, the only office settings I found were a pediatrician\u2019s office and a bright pink\u00a0veterinary office \u2014 which are both associated with stereotypically feminine careers \u2014 and a post\u00a0office that was discontinued in 1995.<\/p>\n<p>There was also a computer and desk intended to be placed\u00a0in a home setting. From my search for \u201cBarbie office,\u201d I more commonly found \u00a0career sets for Ken than viable work-oriented play sets for Barbie. Given the options, I find it hard to image how Mattel sees\u00a0girls playing with Barbie the way the newest ad suggests they might.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, Barbie\u2019s new advertising campaign is just the latest in a long string of\u00a0commercials that try to go viral by appealing to feminist audiences. I would be more impressed if the ad made girls aspiring to male-dominated occupations seem like forces to be reckoned with or, at least, made products that reflected their appropriation of\u00a0feminist ideals.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psmag.com\/books-and-culture\/is-barbie-a-feminist-now\" target=\"_blank\">Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Nicole Bedera is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently studying college sexual assault and construction of young men\u2019s sexualities.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barbie has never exactly been a feminist icon, but last\u00a0week Mattel was\u00a0celebrated for a new\u00a0advertising campaign that some say empowers young girls. In the \u201cImagine the Possibilities\u201d\u00a0commercial, the viewer sees young girls in professional settings \u2014 a science museum, a\u00a0veterinary office, a soccer field \u2014 where they lead adults as if they are the ones [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,223,55,2099,2096,2095,23680,2100,129,23703,1711,76],"class_list":["post-68281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-childrenyouth","tag-gender","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-feminismactivism","tag-gender-sexism","tag-gender-work","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-toysgames","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/11\/2-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68281"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68354,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68281\/revisions\/68354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}