Barbie - A Complex American Icon Essay examples -- American Culture E

As a young girl, I was not very interested in playing with baby dolls. I pet playing with my many stuffed animals or the only doll I did the likes ofBarbie. With my animals, usually I was rescuing them from some horrible disaster such as a flood or a forest fire. I was their chivalric savior and benevolent protector. But with Barbie this was decidedly not the case. Sometimes my Barbie did formula Barbie things, such as get dressed up for an exciting take in with Ken or go shopping with her little sister, Skipper. More often, however, I subjected Barbie to strange, sadistic acts of my imagination. Frequently Barbie, in her pink dune buggy, would have sad head-on collisions with my brothers dump truck, or the brakes would dead go out on her pink Barbie scooter, sending her careening off a steep mountain cliff. Barbie also had the unfortunate tendency to be sucked from her Barbie prostrate by her lovely long blonde hair while travel at 30,000 feet. Since in every other way I was a normal child, psychoanalysts might interpret my play patterns with Barbie as childlike materialisation of womens frustrations at the disparate images popular elaboration presents for women. Most women I know also experience this love/hate feeling towards Barbie and the mixed messages she represents, especially when their daughters start begging for Barbies of their own. While mothers do not exigency to encourage the unrealistic beauty expectations that Barbie represents, they also fondly remember Barbie as their own favorite toy. These many women, and their daughters, have made Barbie the most triple-crown toy for girls since 1959, despite Barbies many contradictions. Barbie embodies American popular cultures attempt to respond to womens changing roles in the era since... ... Barbie is a Million-Dollar Doll, The Saturday Evening Post, December 12, 1964, 72. 23 Douglas, 24. 24 Alls Swell at Mattel, Time, October 26, 1962, 90. 25 Its not the Doll its the Clothes, Business We ek, December 16, 1961, 48. 26 Cleo Shupp, Little Girls are too ruttish too Soon, Saturday Evening Post, June 29, 1963, 12. 27 Zinsser, 73. 28 The Barbie-Doll Set, Nation, April 27, 1964, 407. 29 Donovan Bess, The Menace of the Barbie Dolls, Ramparts, January 25, 1969, 25. 30 quoted in Bess, 26. 31 Letty Pogrebin, Toys Bad News/Good News, Ms., December 1975, 60. 32 Douglas, 27. 33 Douglas, 25. 34 Zeitgeist Barbie, Harpers Magazine, August 1990, 20. 35 Helen Cordes, What a Doll, Utne Reader, March/April 1992, 46. 36 taken from December 2004 Toys R Us, Wal Mart, Target, and K-Mart advertisements.