Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Barbie Culture

Barbie Culture

Rogers, Mary F.

Paperback

Series: Cultural Icons

General Sociology

ISBN10: 0761958886
ISBN13: 9780761958888
Publisher: Sage Publications
Published: Sep 5 2000
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.56
Height: 0.46 Width: 5.62 Depth: 8.56
Language: English

How are images of the body mediated through cultural signs? How does sexual stereotyping work? In what way are these themes bound up in modern consumerism? This book uses one of the most popular accessories of girlhood, the Barbie doll, to explain key aspects of cultural meaning.

Some readings would see Barbie as reproducing ethnicity and gender in a particularly coarse and damaging way - a cultural icon of racism and sexism. Rogers develops a broader, more challenging picture. She shows how the cultural meaning of Barbie is more ambiguous than the narrow, appearance-dominated model that is attributed to the doll. For a start, Barbie′s sexual identity is not clear-cut. Similarly her class situation is ambiguous. But all interpretations agree that, with her enormous range of lifestyle accessories′, Barbie exists to consume. Her infinitely plastic body mirrors an infinitely plastic self that resonates with postmodern notions of fluidity, multiplicity and localised meanings.

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