Barbie Gender Representation

Manufactures of consumer goods play into racialized and gendered preferences for their products, while also generating consumer desires. On the production and marketing of differences, similarities, role models, and both looking-like-me and looking-unlike-me experiences, through toys and games. In this particular article, Ann Ducille critiques the past and present ways in which Mattel presents race and gender through the iconic Barbie doll. Barbie could be seen as a female representation of personal and financial independence, and professional success. She has been a World Cup soccer champion, an astronaut, a doctor, and even a head of state. Yet, she is an utterly distorted physical representation of a woman. In "Black Barbie and …show more content…
Dolls in the early ‘50s and ‘60s came with accessories and garments that heavily symbolized adulthood. Accessories that included bras, girdles, and garters that “allowed young women to anticipate the structured and difficult-to-wear undergarments of the era”. Being that Barbie’s market is intended for girls five and over, the doll itself, her accessories and garments, and her advertisement all play apart in distorting what should be innocent child’s play and instead feeding into the suggested adult sexual fantasy. Messages that the doll projects for little girls teaches them to be grown and prepares them for roles as female adult consumers. The original 1959 Barbie doll was modeled after a German doll from a comic strip named “Bild Lilli”. The German doll was sold to men in tobacco shops and was essentially a sex toy. This shows that Mattel created the Barbie based on “a figment of the imaginations of dirty minded adults”, who project the image of Barbie through their sexual perversions, although the toy is intended for children. Even with the various movies, magazines, computer games, and other components of Barbie culture, the main message is