Repurposing Barbie: An Arts-Based Inquiry

Cathy Smilan

Cathy Smilan University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Abstract

The Barbie doll, a symbolic antithesis of feminism, is my sculptural medium for interrogating relationships between childhood play/role modeling and inequities in workplace structures. In this arts-based inquiry, I identify socially perpetuated trajectories of inculcated gender archetypes. Using the Barbie doll as a form for visual conceptualization, I reposition the iconic cast of U.S. material culture through semiotic inquiry, elucidating concerns from body image to self-imposed silence, to women's complicity in maintaining sexist proclivities of the status quo. Through arts-based inquiry, the imbalances of workplace relationships and human agency are traced from child's play through my journey to find voice and community. Ultimately, Barbie is repurposed as merely a sum of parts connected by string. As an art educator, I ask whom the next generation will allow to act as manipulator, challenging women to model different attributes toward which girls can aspire.

Author Biography

Cathy Smilan, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Cathy Smilan is associate professor of art education, Master of Art Education Graduate Program Director and Assistant Director of the Office of Faculty Development at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her research interests include studio and visual culture-based research, art integration, museum/community partnership, arts-based literacy, and creativity development and assessment. Dr. Smilan is a current member of the NAEA Professional Materials Committee, past member of the Art Education review board and currently serves on the review board of the International Journal of Education through Art. She co-edited the anthology Inquiry in Action: Paradigms, Methodologies and Perspectives in Art Education Research, which includes her sole and co-authored chapters on research methodologies and partnership program evaluation as transformative research. Currently, she is completing a text on art-based research entitled: Transforming Practice through Studio Inquiry.