Reading Lynn Spiegel's "Barbies without Ken: Femininity, Feminism, and the Art-Culture System" from Welcome to the Dreamhouse challenged many notions I've held about Barbie or those who collect Barbies. Coupled with watching three videos by Fiona Apple, Avril Lavigne, and Lil' Kim my notions about femininty, feminism, and female empowerment we challenged further.
Speigel has a nice way of setting up her ideas without moralizing too much or spending time stereotyping so that she can get at the "...more interesting problems regarding the relationship between object relationships and social relationships in postmodern culture"(318). She is able to think about Barbie from feminine and feminsit points of view. Deconstructing this piece would be a long endeavor, but what I gained from a first reading is that people that collect Barbies, use Barbie's image to create art or craft clothes, houses etc. for Barbie have complex relationships to the object. Women who were "traditionally disempowered in the sphere of production" were able to have some power in the economy through their creative endeavors. If your idea of feminism is anti-housewife then housewives finding creative ways to be part of the economy through re-imagining craft might change your perception.
Barbie has an interesting combination of being "wholesome" yet sexual in nature. Her body proportions are rather unhuman yet have set a standard to which many women have compared themsleves to since her inception. Thinking about this wholesome/sexual combination leads me to the three videos I mentioned earlier. In Fiona Apple's "Criminal" she leads us on a dreamy journey through a 70's porn-esque basement with her lyrics of "being a bad bad girl" are juxtaposed with her being watched. This sort of girlish tease with sexual images is almost hard to reconcile and one almost feels dirty after watching it. Oddly, Lil' Kim's "How Many Licks?" is blatantly sexual, yet I didn't feel bad for watching it. As risque as someone might see this video you get the feeling she is in charge for better or worse. Now is she really in charge in an MTV market that plays on super sexual videos exploiting women? It would be interesting to know how much financial control Kim has over her music. Finally Lavigne's "My Happy Ending" didn't really appeal or offend on any level, but that's why I probably found it the most uninteresting piece to watch. Girl and Boy happy. Girl gets mad. Girl sad. Boy apparently didn't mean anything. No happy ending. Boo hoo. It's a typical story of love/loss coupled with a lot of black eyeliner and angst. Of the three videos it also had the least artistic vision sandwiched bewteen a stylish if dirty Fiona and a super-slick "edible doll" come to life Lil' Kim.
My guess is we'll be trying to reconcile all these images and more in the future trying to understand women and how they are portrayed...
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