Barbie - A Complex American Icon Essay - 3507 Words

As a young girl, I was not very interested in playing with baby dolls. I preferred playing with my many stuffed animals or the only doll I did like—Barbie. With my animals, usually I was rescuing them from some horrible disaster such 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 normal 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 brother’s dump truck, or the brakes would suddenly go out on her†¦show more content†¦By examining post-war television, music, movies, magazines, advertising, and newscasts, Douglas, a professor of media and American studies and a media critic, endeavors to â€Å"expose, review, and, at ti mes, make fun of the media-induced schizophrenia so many of us feel, while showing how it has produced tension, anger, and uncertainty in everyday women.†1 Douglas argues that the media helped spur feminism by recognizing baby boomer young women as a huge market but then offered them sexist images against which they would ultimately rebel.2 She highlights various shifts in post-war women’s consciousness and the media’s role both in shaping and responded to those shifts. Douglas’ book also offers an alternative look at the women’s movement and an explanation for the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and subsequent denigration of feminism. Douglas eschews writing a purely objective history of postwar women’s relationship with mass culture; rather, she presents her own perspective. She readily admits her own bias as an educated, Northeastern, white, middle-class woman when she states, â€Å"Like all histories, my account . . . is neither objective nor exhaustive; rather, it is idiosyncratic and replete with the sorts of biases that come from my having been raised in a particular place andShow MoreRelatedEssay on Barbie: Independent Woman or Damaging American Icon?2454 Words   |  10 PagesBarbie: Independent Woman or Damaging American Icon? Shes the classic American beauty, the woman we all dreamed of being at one point in our lives. She has long, tanned legs, cascades of blonde curls and has such perky breasts that she doesnt even need a bra. 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