New article: Barbie in the Army: Mattel Militarism and femininity as visual protest strategy

Despite her apparently ‘apolitical’ origins, Barbie has never been far from the cultural and media zeitgeist. Although Barbie was initially marketed as a teenage fashion model, the doll enjoys some shared history with one of the most politically charged and controversial institutions of contemporary life: the US military. In this article, I demonstrate how this ‘Mattel Militarism’ aestheticizes military themes through femininity. Then, following a series of object-led interviews with women and LGBTQ+ participants, the dualistic role Barbie plays in both contributing to and subverting gendered and militarized representations is further explored.

Themes of symbolic dissonance and the role of fashion emerge from the interviews, pointing to a discomfort with the conflation of Barbies and military themes and Mattel’s aestheticized interpretation. Finally, I address how the recent reappropriation of military Barbie style has been used to draw attention to grassroots progressive causes. I show that the ‘Mattel Militarism’ of the 1990s and early 2000s has been contested from the 2010s onwards by protestors worldwide who have reappropriated the Barbie brand aesthetic. Whilst ‘Mattel Militarism’ builds on established conventions of militarized femininity as defined by Laura Sjoberg, the Barbie costume as protest dress acts as a symbolically ambivalent but ultimately effective visual strategy for gaining international media attention.

Read the full article here in Fashion, Style and Popular Culture (Intellect Journals).