Barbie, The Bear and the fashion duchess who loved Elvis: what you should see, do and read this week

By Jane Wright, The Conversation

This article was first published in our email newsletter Something Good, which every fortnight brings you a summary of the best things to watch, visit and read, as recommended and analysed by academic experts.

I love Frank Gehry, the architect who propelled Bilbao onto the world stage with his extraordinary Guggenheim museum. Barbie? Not so much. But the news that one of her early Dreamhouses was inspired by Gehry’s mid-century designs has made me look at Barbie anew. In fact, our piece this week about Barbie: The Exhibition at London’s Design Museum may very well turn your pretty little head too.

Who knew Barbie’s world was a societal barometer of what was going on in the rapidly modernising 20th century? As our author Daisy McManaman points out, “her houses, fashions, vehicles and even her face, hair and body can be seen as a pink-tinted reflection of western culture”.

Looking at Barbie from a design perspective, we can view the development of tastes, attitudes and culture as the west emerged from the austere postwar years into the 1960s and a whole new world of colour and possibility. Embracing new freedoms and experiences, it was the early days of consumer culture and the burgeoning second wave of feminism.

Barbie’s original Dreamhouse in 1962 was a cool pad that could have been taken straight out of a Mad Men set. Its very creation telegraphed the possibilities at a time when women couldn’t even buy a house on their own. Of course, it may be a stretch to think of Barbie at the forefront of women’s rights, but perhaps we could see her as a stealth Oops!-I’m-a-feminist-by-mistake, much as Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s movie Barbie riotously proclaimed.

After all, Barbie creator Ruth Handler wanted a doll that could be apsirational for girls, and not just a plaything that encouraged the idea of motherhood. Astronaut Barbie floated into view in 1965.

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