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.
This study presents Indian traditional dolls as complex cultural texts that materially and symbolically express gender, identity and social hierarchies in diverse regional contexts. Drawing on feminist theories of gender performativity and frameworks of material culture, it analyses various forms of dolls, from gender-marked puppets and marital couples to generalized human figures and hybrid human–animal configurations, and focuses on how physical attributes, ornamentation and ritual practices construct and sometimes subvert normative gender ideals. The study foregrounds the embodied agency of dolls as active participants in cultural continuity and change, emphasizing the role of materiality, craft techniques, regional styles and ritual performance in constructing multifaceted social meanings. Through ethnographic and interdisciplinary approaches, this research uncovers neglected dimensions of caste, regionalism and ecological embeddedness in doll-making traditions. It also examines contemporary challenges and innovations shaped by globalization, digital media and emerging queer and non-binary affiliations. These findings advance important discussions on how material artefacts enact and reshape gendered social orders and offer new insights into the complex interrelationships of tradition, identity and performativity in Indian material culture.
Mattel’s Ken doll, introduced in 1961, has been positioned as Barbie’s accessory. Like Barbie, Ken and his wardrobe evolved alongside dominant fashion trends, revealing social and cultural forces shaping masculinity in the 1960s. With fashions reflecting contemporary menswear, the classic Ken doll embodied shifting ideals of masculinity throughout the decade. Marketed to children, Ken’s aspirational wardrobe presented an idealized vision of the American man – boyfriend, husband, professional – while remaining accessible to youth culture. As new subcultures emerged, Mattel adapted Ken’s style through more conservative interpretations of progressive trends, keeping the doll desirable and relevant. This article examines key fashions in Ken’s wardrobe across three periods – Ivy Style and Continental (1961–63), Getting to Mod (1964–66) and Boys to Men (1967–69) – situating them alongside Mattel’s marketing materials, contemporaneous fashion sources such as GQ and the Sears catalogues, and existing Barbie and Ken scholarship. Drawing on material culture studies, gendered toy design and menswear scholarship, the article argues that Mattel fashioned Ken as a reflection of evolving mid-twentieth-century masculine ideals, demonstrating how gendered toy design both mirrored and translated the identities American menswear constructed during the 1960s.
Nancy Ann Abbott (1901–64) launched the San Francisco-based Nancy Ann Doll Company (later Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls) in 1936. By 1944, however, Abbott’s company was producing as many as 12,000 dolls daily, grossing roughly $1 million in annual sales, which doubled after 1945, and was ranked as America’s largest doll producer by volume. Doll studies to date have primarily focused on the exteriority of dolls (especially as it informs gender identity formation) at the expense of the meaning placed upon a doll by its individual owner – its interiority. This article addresses how doll interiority constructs meaning by examining the history and significance of Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls. It examines the situation and sites in which Abbott’s dolls were first imagined, reveals the uneasy place of Storybook Dolls within the current literature and argues that the currently reductionist paradigm focusing on exteriority occludes a theoretical space for owner agency in doll play and collection. It explores the distinctiveness and significance of Storybook Dolls through an investigation of their historical rise to prominence, the import of their mixed historical antecedents, their hybridity and Abbott’s specific business and marketing models, especially in the face of changing market demands and economic instability. Finally, it addresses how Abbott’s marketing and advertising strategies, as well as her range of consumers and customer motivations for buying, playing with, and collecting the dolls, all of which evince the concept of doll interiority. Simply put, I argue that a doll means whatever its owner wants.
This article examines the pedagogical possibilities of learning from dolls through an interdisciplinary collaboration centred on the Indigenous and ethnic doll collection of María de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle, a Nahua historian and collector based in Puebla, Mexico. Bringing together faculty, students, librarians and community collaborators at the University of Toronto Scarborough, the Learning from Dolls project uses dolls as material, cultural and relational objects through which students encounter histories of colonialism, gendered labour, cultural memory, Indigenous knowledge, sustainability and artistic practice. We situate the project within sensory, affective, imaginative and land-based (SAIL) pedagogy, an approach that foregrounds embodied, affective, creative and place-attuned modes of learning. Drawing on collaborator testimonies, the article shows how dolls can function as plurivocal objects: they carry traces of makers, materials, collectors, purchasers, places and political histories, while also inviting students to bring their own identities and inherited knowledges into the classroom. The project extends existing scholarship on dolls in education by moving beyond their use as simulations, therapeutic tools or diversity prompts, and by emphasizing relational accountability, reciprocity and knowledge by acquaintance. It also demonstrates how object-based learning, digital storytelling, slow looking and community-engaged pedagogy can support anti-colonial and anti-racist approaches in higher education. We argue that learning from dolls creates conditions for students to engage material culture as a medium through which histories, affects, ethical responsibilities and possible solidarities become perceptible.
