Barbie has existed for many years, where the target audience are young girls who desire and aspire to behave and act like Barbie. Barbie positions the ideal construction of a female while encompassing the attributes of femininity. Since, Barbie socially constructs the ideal narratives that society puts forth it begins to shape the identities of many girls because they are told this is the correct way and they need to conform to these practices as it is the ideology. Identity message circulates through merchandise that surrounds young consumers as they dress in, sleep on, bathe in, eat from, and play with commercial goods decorated with pop culture images, print, logos, immersing children in products that invite identification with familiar media characters that communicate the gendered expectations about what children should buy, how they should play, and who they should be (Wohlwend, 2009). Over the years, Barbie has been represented as the ideal heteronormative female that is shown through her figure, her accessories, shoes, her pink cars, pink house, stuffed animals etc. These are constantly shown to girls through advertisements, billboards, peers, and parents that constantly reinforce this. Femininity is colour coded with the colour pink, that is constantly reinforced in the media and by parents that pink is considered the ideal colour of femininity. These ideas are reinforced as society and media have socially constructed the female body of how they should be, their manners, their looks etc. Many girls view Barbie as the ideal and this begins to be part of the discourse in society that sends a message that Barbie’s personality, her actions, manners should be practiced by all girls. Historically, media promotes and advertises Barbie and Ken where they are used for promotional purposes that allow young girls to know that they need to be heterosexual in order to be in a relationship with a guy similar to Ken through his physique, his masculinity. The dolls identity texts from damsel in distress fairy tales with princess victims and prepare the ground for the insertion of the little girl into romantic heterosexuality, where it portrays girls as dependent and innocent waiting for their royal husband as life’s fulfillment (Wohlwend, 2009). Barbie becomes more dependent on Ken, where when she didn’t know him, she was an independent women and then with Ken she embraces the ideal role of women to be dependent on men to take care of them. In addition, other consumer products involve the representation of males and females to perform the traditional ideal heteronormative constructed gender practices that need to be conformed by society which are told at a young age that they need to practice. Some examples include, G.I Joe, Batman, Hulk, Dragon Ball Z, Transformers etc. whereas for females its Barbie, and Disney princesses that they try to emulate their persona.
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“The Three Little Pigs” is a story that is taught to kids at a young age, where everybody knows the order of the story as it is the same. However, this new version of the story was creative and interesting to read because it challenges our thinking and surprises us of what possibly could happen next. In this new version, the pigs were able to escape from the wolf and outsmart it by escaping from the scene itself. The pigs were able to rework the old story and create a new one, where they were able to come out of the story by the wolf blowing and visit new fairy tales. This story challenges our thinking of what a story should consist of and how it should end.
This fairy tales supports critical literacy as it is about the reader assessing and understanding what is happening in the story through the implicit messages, or pictures that inform our thinking. Critical literacy is the reading and re-writing of the world (Morell, 2007), where this story does the same by pigs having a chance to re-invent their own story by having dragons, cats in their house to create their own definition of what a story should consist of. By doing so, it allows the reader to create their own imagination of what could possibly happen next and this imagination has no restrictions rather it is our way to express ourselves. Thus, critical literacy allows the reader to not just read the text but assess and understand it (Morell, 2007). The story for me was a nice juxtaposition between the old and the new and how there were blank pages that made me think as to why it is such, or even the layout of the pages of different stories above ground as if it is a maze of those stories that one has to figure out. For me it was interesting to see the maze and how in order to get to the center of the maze, I as a reader can create my own story by passing and through my directions I have reinvented a story myself. For me this story, shows how it is a remixed version or style that is prominent these days through the media and TV shows that are being rebooted to create a different story, such as Fuller House etc. |
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