Title
Artifact
Barbie is a brand of dolls that were first produced by the toy company Mattel in 1959, and has since become one of the most popular titles within the female toy market (History, 2009). Mattel released the first Barbie doll in New York city in 1959 (History, 2009). The creator of Barbie and co founder of Mattel, designed the Barbie as an eleven inch tall, white woman with flowing blonde hair (History, 2009). Since 1959, Barbie has sold over 800 million dolls world wide, ultimately exploding into a “global icon” company (History, 2009). In 2016, Mattel released a new line of barbie dolls called “Barbie Fashionista Line” consisting of many dolls who each have a different physical exterior. The different dolls are of “4 body …show more content…
To reiterate, Barbie as a piece of popular culture, becomes a detrimental site of identity construction for young girls when they begin to look to the image of their Barbie dolls for guidance or reassurance of them selves. Young girls will interpret the Fashionista line’s marketing within Barbie’s “preferred reading” of it, as an inspirational evolution of representation of a variety of girls (O’Brien & Szemen, 2014 p. 94). Female Barbie consumers accepting the Barbie Fashionista line as a site of inspiration and female diversity, but struggling to find a doll that looks the same way that they do, can be recognized as a “negotiated position” (94). The term “negotiated position” refers to a situation when the audience consumes the intended meaning of a popular culture item, but then interprets the meaning based on their individual perceptions (94). Consumers unknowingly accept the ethos of Barbie’s marketing strategy claiming to reach out to all types of girl, which unintentionally fosters alienation when girls look through the 4 body types that are supposed to be a representative sample of all girls, cannot find their …show more content…
Therefore, like all other Barbie dolls, the social implications discussed of which emoji fun doll portrays, can be experienced by mass amounts of individuals. Building on the idea of body image, emoji fun doll contributes to the “manifestation of the damaging myths of female beauty and the feminine body…through such vehicles as popular and commodity culture (DuCille, year). Public and popular interest in “commodity culture” has given entertainment industries such as mattel, the power to influence young girls’ perception on what the female body should look like through the production of female Barbies. Barbie produces the idea that there are thin, tall and curvy body types and this is what they look like. Young girls who will own Emoji fun doll, and who discover that she belongs in a “curvy” category, will go on to singly associate her plastic figure with what a curvy woman looks like. More over, the Barbie line also fosters a sense of “realism” (O’Brien &Szeman, 2014 p. 181). Realism in that, consumers associate the physical characteristics of Barbie dolls with those of real human beings. Although, the features that the dolls have are features that real people have, they do not look the same and should not be interpreted as anything more than assets on a toy. O’Brien and Szeman (2014) explain that “the realism of these films…increases the likelihood of our sympathetic identification with
Artifact
Barbie is a brand of dolls that were first produced by the toy company Mattel in 1959, and has since become one of the most popular titles within the female toy market (History, 2009). Mattel released the first Barbie doll in New York city in 1959 (History, 2009). The creator of Barbie and co founder of Mattel, designed the Barbie as an eleven inch tall, white woman with flowing blonde hair (History, 2009). Since 1959, Barbie has sold over 800 million dolls world wide, ultimately exploding into a “global icon” company (History, 2009). In 2016, Mattel released a new line of barbie dolls called “Barbie Fashionista Line” consisting of many dolls who each have a different physical exterior. The different dolls are of “4 body …show more content…
To reiterate, Barbie as a piece of popular culture, becomes a detrimental site of identity construction for young girls when they begin to look to the image of their Barbie dolls for guidance or reassurance of them selves. Young girls will interpret the Fashionista line’s marketing within Barbie’s “preferred reading” of it, as an inspirational evolution of representation of a variety of girls (O’Brien & Szemen, 2014 p. 94). Female Barbie consumers accepting the Barbie Fashionista line as a site of inspiration and female diversity, but struggling to find a doll that looks the same way that they do, can be recognized as a “negotiated position” (94). The term “negotiated position” refers to a situation when the audience consumes the intended meaning of a popular culture item, but then interprets the meaning based on their individual perceptions (94). Consumers unknowingly accept the ethos of Barbie’s marketing strategy claiming to reach out to all types of girl, which unintentionally fosters alienation when girls look through the 4 body types that are supposed to be a representative sample of all girls, cannot find their …show more content…
Therefore, like all other Barbie dolls, the social implications discussed of which emoji fun doll portrays, can be experienced by mass amounts of individuals. Building on the idea of body image, emoji fun doll contributes to the “manifestation of the damaging myths of female beauty and the feminine body…through such vehicles as popular and commodity culture (DuCille, year). Public and popular interest in “commodity culture” has given entertainment industries such as mattel, the power to influence young girls’ perception on what the female body should look like through the production of female Barbies. Barbie produces the idea that there are thin, tall and curvy body types and this is what they look like. Young girls who will own Emoji fun doll, and who discover that she belongs in a “curvy” category, will go on to singly associate her plastic figure with what a curvy woman looks like. More over, the Barbie line also fosters a sense of “realism” (O’Brien &Szeman, 2014 p. 181). Realism in that, consumers associate the physical characteristics of Barbie dolls with those of real human beings. Although, the features that the dolls have are features that real people have, they do not look the same and should not be interpreted as anything more than assets on a toy. O’Brien and Szeman (2014) explain that “the realism of these films…increases the likelihood of our sympathetic identification with