Barbie’s upcoming live-action movie, going into production at the end of this year, is promised to be about female empowerment. The plot aims to team the original doll, marketed in 1959, with an overworked bureaucrat looking for an assistant – as well as many dazzling costume changes. ‘We always thought that the Barbie story had…
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It’s possible that no toy has been subjected so consistently to feminist criticisms as Mattel’s Barbie Doll. As a kid, I heard many of them from my mother. I heard how that ‘if Barbies were real women, they would be nine feet tall.’ ‘Look at their feet, they’re not at all like real people’s.’ ‘No one’s…
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While Mattel’s Monster High dolls have savaged Mattel’s Barbie in the marketplace, what have we really gained as consumers? Monster High’s ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Cleo De Nile’ and ‘Draculaura’ amongst many others – aside from being the offspring of classic monsters – are all about celebrating difference. So sayeth Mattel. But are they? Barbie had unrealistic proportions,…
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A life-sized Barbie Dreamhouse is opening in Europe, in what newspaper articles call a feminist nightmare. And they are not the only ones a bit perturbed by the idea, with more than 1700 supporters joining the ‘Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse’ facebook page since it was started in March. When I agreed to write this article, I…
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