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

As a young girl, I was not very interested in work outing with do by dolls. I preferred playing with my many stuffed animals or the only doll I did likeBarbie. With my animals, usually I was rescuing them from some horrible disaster such(prenominal) as a flood or a forest fire. I was their heroic savior and benevolent protector. But with Barbie this was decidedly not the case. Sometimes my Barbie did everyday Barbie things, such as get dressed up for an exciting date 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 tragic head-on collisions with my brothers dump truck, or the brakes would suddenly go expose 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 plane by her lovely commodious blonde hair while flying at 30,000 feet. Since in ev ery other way I was a normal child, psychoanalysts might interpret my play patterns with Barbie as childlike manifestation of womens frustrations at the disparate images popular agriculture 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 want to encourage the unrealistic beauty expectations that Barbie represents, they also fondly recollect Barbie as their own favorite toy. These many women, and their daughters, have made Barbie the most successful 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 eventide Post, December 12, 1964, 72. 23 Douglas, 24. 24 Alls gallant at Mattel, Time, October 26, 1962, 90. 25 Its not the Doll its the Clothes , Business Week, December 16, 1961, 48. 26 Cleo Shupp, Little Girls are too Sexy 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.