From Claire T.
From infancy, girls are fed a slew of information and told that to be a successful girl they have to regurgitate it. Dolls such as Barbies are one way that this information is communicated. Barbies come with baking sets, younger sisters, pink cars, and a never-ending collection of high-heeled shoes. They epitomize the dream life created by adults for children’s consumption – slim, vapid, and fabulous women who ensnare their Ken dolls with a flip of blonde hair. Is the way that children play with Barbies scripted or unscripted play? I would say scripted, from the memories I have. I only ever had one Ken doll, so whoever I was playing with and I would fight it out to see which one “got the boy.” This was the plot of every storyline, without fail. Is that a good message to give our children?
In my picture collage, I tapped into the strange dichotomy of this Barbie dream life fed to children. The first photo is of a Barbie sitting in a crib wearing a bikini, with her breasts being the focus of the photo and her face left blurry. This photo is intended to show that girls are constantly being told to be sexy, to be beautiful, and then in the next breath to be innocent and sweet. The second photo is of a Barbie sitting down with a baby in her lap, her face cut out of the frame. The outfit she is wearing is very delicate, all pink and lace. This photo is meant to symbolize all of the ways we push being nurturing and demure onto our little girls. We give them baby dolls and baby Barbies to prepare them for the “eventuality” that they will have kids of their own. The focus of this photo is the baby, showing that we prioritize children over the women that bear them. By painting this picture of women as inherently nurturing creatures who desire children, we diminish women’s value to the value of their children. The last photo is of the last two Barbies mentioned, again cutting out their faces. Blatant sexuality, quiet demureness, and a baby posed side by side against a white background. The white helps to emphasize the innocence inherent in children’s toys even as the foreground tells a different story.
I combined these three photos the way I did because it intentionally unsettles. Nothing is evenly spaced, and the lines do not point to a central thing. This is meant to symbolize how many conflicting messages we send our children with toys like Barbie, going off in so many different directions at once.
2 comments:
I like how you brought up the fact of there only being one male doll, and how you had to fight over who got "the guy." I feel like that shows how society wanted young girls to view men. "who gets the man?" we see this constantly today as women will go out far enough in physical appearance to get the man.
What I like about your picture is how you mentioned the dichotomy of expectations. There's definitely a contradictory element when it comes to how women are supposed to act in society, and I like how you showed that with Barbie's. This solidifies the idea that these expectations are driven into females at a very young age. I also like the fact that you captured that there are really only two ways that women are seen in our day-to-day lives: overly sexualized and maternal. These are on two completely different wavelengths, which I think sends a less than clear message to girls. There never seems to be a merging of the two in the real world (or doll world in this case), and that can lead to confusion; do people want us (girls) to be one way or the other?
Post a Comment