Barbie's Kniky Queer Accesories: relating the 2

Reading through Barbie's Queer Accessories and Kinky continues to bring up this idea I read in the very first chapter of of Rand's book. She is talking about the marketing strategies of Mattel vs. those of other projects, like Etch-A-Sketch. She compares them and says:

In contrast, the traffic in Barbie is far more complicated, and many features that distinguish it from the traffic in the Etch-A-Sketch are features generally understood to characterize hegemonic discourse. The first lies in the language of infinite possibility that Mattel uses to camouflage what is actually being promoted: a very limited set of products, ideas, and actions. Mattel promotes Barbie to consumers the way capitalists promote capitalism to the people who least benefit from it. The discourse maintains that the limits come only from withing you- you can be rich if you set your mind to it; you can make Barbie be anything you want her to be. The goal of this discourse is to mask external limits so that you have appeared to choose freely actions- working for low wadges, buying Malibu Barbie- that will benefit the discourse spinner. (p. 28)

This marketing makes so much sense. You can make Barbie into whatever you want her to be as a young child. This way of marketing her works with the imaginations of children and the adults who buy her for their young children. They may be dressed as Malibu Barbie, Wedding Barbie, Black Barbie or Beach Party Ken, but the children who play with them can let their imaginations run wild. What a PERFECT way of selling a child's toy.

Likewise, almost every poem in Kinky is titled and about a particular Barbie. They are made sexual (very often in this book) as well as given many races, religions and interests. Regardless of the title they are sold under, they are turned into whatever fill in the blank Barbie the player decides.

Take a list of titles as proof (in no particular order, but those I found most interesting in the collection):
-ONE AFTERNOOON WHEN BARBIE WANTED TO JOIN THE MILITARY
-ORIENTAL BARBIE, BLACK BARBIE HISTORY, HISPANIC BARBIE, NATIVE AMERICAN BARBIE (these in their specific order and placement in the collection)
 -BLINDFOLD BARBIE
-KINKY (which by the way is such a good title for the collection and a great poem to highlight)
-BICENTENNIAL BARBIE
-PLANNING THE FANTASY WEDDING
-ANTICHRIST BARBIE (particularly interesting)
-BARBIE MOLESTER
-MATH CLASS IS TOUGH
-MORMON BARBIE

Reading both books simultaneously is an awesome way of getting to think about the Barbies we all thoughtlessly desired and played with; how they were marketed to make us want them so bad, how they designed and modeled them and most of all the negative aspects of Barbie and Mattel when given a closer look. Verrrrrrry interesting.......

Unelievable video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn7Yu4jzWZM

We viewed this video in my deviant behavior sociology class. It absolutely shocked me! To see women treated so horribly IN PUBLIC! Most of the footage is from a Gay Rights rally in NYC's central park. The men in the video are adopting a group think mentality and believe that they can act however they wish. They sexually assault a huge number of women. The video compares many of these men to ones we see in hip hop and rap videos. It goes to show that the media and society drill into people's minds that women are sex objects and men are the possessors. That they can act as they wish and should act aggressively and sexually towards women. I was absolutely appalled at the footage in the documentary and immediately though of sharing it on my blog.