Barbie: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:46, 21 November 2005

Revision as of 16:19, 22 November 2005

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The enormous range of available accessories relating to clothes, hair, make-up, parties and looking pretty give rise to the accusation that Barbie encourages young girls to focus on shallow trivia. Her accessories reflect a lifestyle that is unobtainable for most of the girls who play with her.

This culminated in [[1993]] when Mattel released "Teen Talk Barbie", a talking version of the doll. It spoke a number of phrases such as, "Will we ever have enough clothes?" "I love shopping!" and, "Wanna have a pizza party?" Each doll was programmed to say four out of 270 possible phrases, so chances were good that no two dolls owned by a girl or her friends would be exactly the same. One of these 270 phrases was "Math class is toughhard!" Although only about 1.5% of all the dolls sold said the phrase, it caused public outcry over Barbie's representation of women, and the infamous phrase quickly became a common pop culture reference.

A group of parents, [[feminist]]s and other [[activist]]s known as the [[Barbie Liberation Organization]] bought hundreds of Barbies and [[GI Joe]] dolls, and switched their voice circuitry. This resulted in the new modified Barbie saying, "Eat lead, Cobra!" and "Dead men tell no lies." [http://www.etext.org/Zines/UnitCircle/uc3/page10.html]