The point of the presentation is that it is an example of media literacy...how to deconstruct objects of corporate promotion.  Barbie is a doll prepared by a large organization with political and financial agendas.  There was no attempt to "offend" those who like Barbie, but to nudge us to think critically and to learn to dissect--that is the purpose of the entire course.

We are not setting up cultural icons to tear down and diss them, but to be informed about our own society.

I think there's a very strong question in all this: are we ok? Sure I grew up with and loved my G.I. Joe and I'm not a raging maniacal serial killer, but maybe I don't mind what's going on in Iraq and Sudan and the streets of our own cities as much as I might if I had, say, grown up in a monestary in Nepal. 

But back to Barbie: I've got two girls. One was taught to hate Barbie. And she does. This is part of her character now. You couldn't tell her that it wasn't her idea that she doesn't like Barbie. But it was. Our other girl, typical second child, escaped our Draconian parenting techniques, fell under the influence of her peer group, and loves Barbie.  Both kids were taught whether to like or not like Barbie by their environment.  And you were taught whether to like Barbie or not by your environment. Be it parents, peers or the media.

Is Barbie good? Is Barbie evil? Of course, like my two kids, she's neither. We all hang in the balance. Humans are unfinished. But does Barbie carry with her a whole load of cultural information to be unpacked? Absolutely. Can we think critically about what she represents? Most definitely.

To not want to do so strikes me to be exactly the sort of thing to investigate. Heck, even my 4 year old can engage in a debate about what's wrong with wanting to be a princess.

I loved Barbie and remember having one Barbie doll and one Skipper. We did not have much money and so furniture was made with paper towel rolls, Kleenex boxes and any paper we could get our hands on.   I can still remember about 35 years ago when my mother brought home a yellow coat with fur around the collar for Barbie.  She was now glamorously dressed for a Canadian winter.

Has anyone seen the short film, The Tribe? I think Shirley, you would enjoy this movie!  It basically is about the most successful doll -Barbie, and what it can teach us about being Jewish in today's world.   " The film mixes old school narration with a new school visual style and weaves together archival footage, graphics, animation, Barbie dioramas, and slam poetry to take audiences on an electric ride through the complex history of both the Barbie doll and the Jewish people- from Biblical times to present day. By tracing Barbie's history, the film sheds light on the questions: What does it mean to be an American Jew today? What does it mean to be a member of any tribe in the 21st Century?"

It is quite a cool movie that even comes with a classroom kit for discussion. I use it often in informal educational experiences for Jewish students on Jewish identity.  It is quite cool to see how this film uses Barbie as a medium to teach about the Jewish tribe. 

I grew up in a small town in Argentina until I was nine and then I moved to another small town in Israel and so on... I do not recall ever seeing a Barbie, I do not recall my neighbors playing with them..I do not believe that they were widely available back then. In fact, I never owned a Barbie, I am 46 years old and I do not think I was aware of the existence of Barbies till I had kids, and I have boys, they haven’t asked me to buy them a Barbie yet. I remember though, in the later years, discussions on the effect of Barbie on young girls, specifically about her anatomy, the small waist, the long legs, etc. Funny enough, it always gets worst; Barbie seems fairly harmless if you compare them to the Brats. Brats are the main offenders today, and Brats are identified with the image of an anorexic young girl, with huge faces, small skinny bodies, heavy makeup, skimpy clothing, high heels, big lips, and even bigger eyes. In fact in 2008 the Brats story books were taken off the widely popular scholastic schools catalog, because they promote, quote," (Susan Linn, psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood coalition) “a highly sexualized and an impossible anorexic body image to very young girls”.. I believe Barbies are the McDonalds of toys, they’re huge, they’re everywhere, they even supersize themselves (accessories, cars, homes, etc) they went global before everyone else did. But again, I believe that is up to the consumer to think, identify and make a choice.

 
I have embarked on a journey to teach my grade six students how to be critical thinkers. Yes me, a Barbie lover and marketing major want my students to know how advertisers try to lure them in. As I began my first class on advertising I was wondering would my eleven year olds even know what advertisement meant? I started asking them questions such as why during certain shows certain commercials are shown? They actually had some really great responses. Than I decided our first advertising project would be to design cereal boxes. We went over why certain cereal boxes are placed on lower shelves. What’s the difference between kids’ cereal and adults? Etc. Eventually they began to create their own. PBS has a useful site where kids can go online and not only create their own cereal boxes but learn advertisers’ tricks.
ANYWAYS my point behind this blurb is last week while I was busy teaching my students about cereal box the news announced how certain cereal companies such as Kellogg’s were taking advantage of swine flu and stating on their cereal boxes that cereal X can actually increase one’s immunity. Now seriously how can anyone believe a cereal can increase your immunity? One of the cereals was Coco puffs.
 
http://www.xomba.com/cocoa_krispies_fights_swine_flu_kellogg_claims_cereal_helps_immune_system
 
 
I brought the news clip to my students’ attention which led to great conversations. One student wanted to know why Kellogg’s wasn’t being sued for false advertising. I said; Angelo, next week, you just gave me a great lesson plan for this class. As I begin planning this week lesson with Angelo’s question I am going to use magazine ads that make false promises but don’t get sued.

I never had a Barbie nor the good fortune to play with it. That privilege was for the 'very posh' who would spend their summer holidays abroad and then come back in the new term to show off their shopping. I remember distinctly stealing longing  glances at the fancy dollhouse and that divine beauty who lived in it on play days in school and the shame with which i'd hide my chubby celluloid doll behind me was agonising! I felt primitive, inferior. Not that i came from an unprivileged family, I was better than 70% of the Pakistani population but Barbie remained an unattainable luxury. 
If i ran into any of those Barbie girls today, after all these years, i would probably still be gripped with the same inferiority complex that haunted me in my school years.
I never really realised how much damage a plastic doll could do until i sat through the presentation the other day. It was very thought provoking and made me reminisce my childhood experiences... the fears and complexes. It got me thinking about the power that can be exercised by a mere toy. I wondered about the majority of the population, who would play with the traditional clay and cloth dolls?      
 Would they too feel threatened by this western beauty or are they blissfully oblivious of the bashful plight plaguing the middle class kid. I also recalled being secretly relieved that I did not own one of these Punjabi dolls when i was invited to a 'doll wedding'  by a neighbours' kid. That would have been fatal for my reputation in school. I would have died of shame! My faithful celluloid worked for me... i remember being happy to settle for her instead after that invite!
It is interesting to note how Barbie has touched the lives of kids all over the world,  be it embedding notions of perfection or narrating culture/ history through a very limited lens, she has power! One can not help but admit ...The bitch indeed does have everything!

We were talking the other day about how sex sells everything, how women are used as objects in the advertizing industry. In my opinion, adults do have the maturity and the tools to interpret the messages that are thrown at them, they are able to respond in one way or another, according to societal or personal standards. But what happens with our children? I feel they are pushed prematurely into adulthood, they are bombarded with sexual and sexist massages and images. How do you interpret an advertisement like ‘Never too young to be sexy’? What do 5-year-olds understand? It’s no longer just the clothes, it’s a whole attitude that’s shaping their identities, or, better said, that affects their identity.
One boy in second grade today was very angry because another boy behind him had pronounced the word ‘sex’. So I asked the daring boy what he wanted to say and he goes ‘I said sex but he’s the one doing it!’, at which point the other one started crying. So I had to take them outside of the classroom and talk to them. One of them had been taught, even shown on the computer, very explicitly, what sex is, the other one just knew it was a bad word. So, there you have it, two very different families/siblings teaching their kids different values, and probably dissimilar ways to approach the messages they get from the media. So I’m really wondering what the right age would be to teach children what sex is and what it means to be sexy.
If you’re interested in the subject, this is a great film about the ‘unhealthy culture surrounding our children’:  
http://www.nfb.ca/film/sexy_inc/