I'm seriously not understanding why this is supposed to be offensive, and you're not exactly explaining.

As you say, this is supposed to be an ironic look at the American dream of motherhood, but why can't we just talk about real women in this situation? This seems to be more or less what you're saying, and you're completely missing the point. Art is supposed to make you think and start discussions. This is just another way of looking at the real issues.

We can't joke now? We can't make art about controversial subjects? Your universe must be a really boring place.

If it was just some silly internet photoshop I wouldn't care, but it's supposed to be art? Uh, okay. It's not TERRIBLE, but I don't really see what it's suppose to do. Shock me?

Sorry, sister, but I knows tons of teen mothers. My best friend got pregnant the summer before our senior year.

I HOPE it's supposed to be ironic. It's not the "teen pregnancy" thing that creeps me out but the text on the side of the box, talking about shopping and a trendy diaper bag.

My work computer doesn't seem to be able to open the PowerPoint file, I'm going to have to wait until I get home to view the presentation. Does it expand on that first image and/or provide commentary?

I don't know about the rest of you...but, isn't this almost glamorizing teen pregnancy...

"Barbie can't wait to have her baby..."
"She's so glad she didn't listen to the grumpy old nurse at the clinic..."
"She's had so much fun shopping for cool baby..."

I don't know if this really is on the market, considering this is the first I've ever heard of it, but if it is, it can be a very dangerous tool for young girls...it might actually make them believe that it is soo much fun to have a baby rather than an abortion? (that's what I get from the nurse comment)Having a baby let's you buy cool baby clothes...puh leaze...it's only fun in the beginning and then you realize that a baby costs a ton...

maybe I am missing the inner message in this barbie thing, but the psych major I have tells me that this is a bad thing...

I don't find anything interesting or compelling about this art. It doesn't offend me, but I don't think it deserves discussion.

Sorry, but aren't we past the stage where teen pregnancy is shocking and we all pretend it doesn't happen everywhere?

ohhh...this is a presentation...ok, I see...still, I find it disturbing...

Sorry for the double-post,

It told me my original comment had not posted and I had to re-write it. :)

nattles,

i didn't see the word "offensive" in there one time... the analysis seems to be more focused on how much more powerful this art would be if it had a more developed statement... right now, it's way too easy to just be funny, snarky and ironic... the piece could be a lot more powerful than that.

so, yeah, we can joke, but jokes can be a much more effective way of looking at real issues if they deal with a little more of those real issues than just the most obvious aspects of the problem...

i don't think this is so much disturbing as weak... something that could have been a good idea and, instead, is just making fun of real people with no real point. as SaltyLilKipper pointed out, it pretty much stumbles around "shocking" and never goes anywhere else.

peace and blessings

"I think this is supposed to be ironic and tells us a story about youth, motherhood and that the Barbie American dream isn't peachy and perfect, like Barbie wants us to think it is."

Yes, I do think that's what this is. I think it's brilliant, actually. While Barbie isn't necessarily a role model for all little girls, she's generally used as a symbol for the various media personalities that little girls look up to. And more and more teen pregnancies are starting to hit the media. Pregnancy itself is a trend now - look at the "bump watch" in any celebrity tabloid. This is an attack on that, a reminder that we have to have honest conversations about sexuality and parenthood with children.

You said that starting a dialogue is more important than making art. At least I think that's what you meant, correct me if I'm wrong. But that's what good art does. It fuels the dialogue. They are interconnected. I love this piece!

oops... shoulda read the title... at any rate, i don't see it as a straight condemnation of the piece....

LOL. This is obviously satire. I like it. She "didn't listen to the grumpy old nurse at the clinic" because she was too busy having materialistic dreams that her old Barbies likely helped to nurse in her for years and years.

This is OK, but let's talk about the real state of young women and motherhood so we can get appropriate education and resources where we need them.

Well, art like this at least opens a space or provides an opportunity to begin doing that. I don't know if that should necessarily be the artist's job, anyway, though it's of course great when artists do "talk serious" about the issues their art addresses.

I feel as if this can be a dangerous tool because girls want to be like Barbie, therefore they may want to go out and get pregnant at a younger age. Barbie is a role model and if you want to show a realistic Barbie, make one that isn't so insanely pretty without her perfect, impossible body.

I'm going with allegra on this one. I can't look at this and think "this person is seriously f*cked up."

Clearly, they're just having fun and being ironic. I'm not sure I necessarily think it's a creative piece, but it definitely seems like satyr.

I like this art. I feel like it's also a commentary on that stupid mantra we give young girls, "Be Sexy, but don't have sex." We give our daughters hyper-sexualized dolls to play with, like Barbie with her big boobs and sexy little outfits, then we fail to give them sex ed and expect them not to be sexually curious and stay virgins til marriage. We might as well be giving our daughters "teen pregnancy" Barbie to play with and see as a role-model!

after watching the powerpoint, i think it's really interesting. personally, i'm not talented enough to remold a barbie doll and repackage it like it's supposed to be that way. that being said. if it were real, i might puke,but since art is in the eye of the beholder, i think it's really creative.

The Barbi dolls started going down hill after the producers of the doll had Barbi dump Ken.

Seriously, is that what we want to encourage young girls to do. We neeed to promote love and caring between the sexes and stop this bitterness permiating the feminist movement.

bobbigrl, you mean Barbie went downhill because she didn't have a man? You want to encourage young girls to focus on finding a boyfriend? Is that really what you're saying?

Wanting to be able to stand on your own two feet without a man there to support you isn't "bitter" - it's wanting to be a full person. I'd certainly encourage a young girl to be independent and know herself before trying to add a partner to her life.

I do not find this ofensive in the least, maybe to those who have been sheltered all there lives. However, i find this to be a interesting work of art, and yes in my opinion it is art. You can't/shouldn't put a definition to it. Art is supposed to make you think and can even be a window of sorts to our society...don't forget the alleged 'pregnancy pact' that made news a few months ago, and being taught absinance only "sex education" in many schools.

As far as this influencing young girls that is fun to have a baby...it might be true for the ones who have little to zero parental involvment and lack comprehensive sex education.

@Puckalish: The TITLE?

@Samhita: I'm sorry if I'm misreading you, but the way you wrote this said to me that you think you might have a problem with this, but you're not sure. And then you didn't really articulate what your problem is, other than that people need to talk about these issues rather than making silly art projects. And if that is your entire (possible) objection, then I really do think you're missing the point completely.

Barbie is used to represent the "ideal" modern woman, rather than an actual woman. She's beautiful, she's had every career in existence, she has a hot boyfriend and occasionally a kid. This art project is all about the fetishization of motherhood that we in the feminist community complain about so much, and that's pretty cool.

Seriously, I know girls who think kind of like this, and it's ridiculous and scary. This is the kind of attitude this project is examining.

Barbie broke up with Ken because the BRATZ were taking over the market and killing Mattel's sales. So they needed Barbie to have as many additional Ken-like cool male friends as the BRATZ do. I used to work at K B Toys. I saw it all go down live in aisle 3.

Neat art project. Obviously for mature audiences and this will never be in an actual toy store so I don't see where all the hysteria is coming from. If a little girl DOES stumble upon it whilst checking her daily feminist blogs (heh), it can serve as a nice discussion piece for human anatomy, the TALK, or whatever. Kids aren't as dumb/naive/unobservant as parent's would like to think.

How might one think this offensive? I mean, what about it would be construed as offensive? I don't find it so, so I'm curious, Samhita, about what people you might've talked to took offense at.

Personally, I lump this in the category of: boring, one-trick art pieces that resemble the kind of doodles I did on my homework in ninth grade.

However, this piece did remind me of something that, during my Barbie-playing years, always creeped me out about the marketing of the dolls: how young Barbie is designed to be. (In my Barbie-playing, my dolls were usually professional working moms: doctors, international correspondents and artists.)

I wonder if this is a comment on the paparazzi obession with pregnant celebrities at all. The paparazzi reduces pregnancy to a very shallow place - so-and-so was at the baby store! They bought a pink dress! She was wearing such-and-such over her belly bump!

So many people (I don't know what the reaction was here, since this was in my pre-Feministing days) condemned Jamie Lynn Spears for appearing too happy about the situation, but it's not like the media ever captured any of her "Oh, shit, can I do this? Am I ready?" moments. Or any of the, "Are we doing this together?" talks between pregnant non-married celebrity couples.

nattles, i caught the title... the title is a question... the title offers options, a spectrum, you knee-jerked to think that one half of the title characterizes samhita's entire analysis and that's just silly. but thanks for the caps.

I couldn't view the power point but I think this is really cool and see it as alluding to two different issues of teen pregnancy which have been mentioned. 1)the recent fascination of the media with celebrity pregnancy and teen pregnancy which focuses on what the mothers are wearing, what they are buying for their baby, and what their nursery looks like and which glorifies these teens with abnormal resources for having the baby 2)the hyper sexualization of toys (including dolls) and clothing for young girls with few representations of possible consequences of sex or realistic portrayal of real teen female's lives. I agree that the message delivered by dolls like Bratz and the media to girls is that they should be "hot" and "sexy" and materialistic but not have sex as they should be objects of desire but not actually have desire for anything but materialistic goods.
I don't think this is "great art" but is interesting art and could provoke discussion about these topics and more, which is one of the reasons art (especially this style of art) is used. I think the writing which goes with this doll is part of the irony and when you look at the statement I see this doll as making it fits right in. This is a piece of art, not a discussion. Both are useful in critiquing culture and promoting change.

@Samhita: Okay, so I misread you. It just seems like a weird way to approach something you don't have any problem with. Were you expecting other people to have an issue?

It's ok though, because she's a born-again Christian and "engaged".

It seems more like bad, untimely art to me. I mean, did Westerberg *just* hear about teen pregnancy? It's not like it's a brand new issue, so to attempt to examine it in this way seems extremely...unthoughtful.

I don't find it offensive because of the content. I just find it to be poorly executed and somewhat immature. This seems like a sophomore year undergraduate art school concept, with professional amounts of money. Boring & uninspired. /art snobbery

Puckalish summed it up rather well too.

anyways, i don't know about samhita, but i think it's a real let-down, but maybe you didn't understand the first time i said that... for something that somehow got so much traction, i, for one, am disappointed that the analysis didn't go any further...

i mean, the artist has a powerpoint / quicktime piece on her website and there's copy... there would be plenty of places to dig in a deeper analysis than what is present, but there isn't... particularly if it's going to be a kind of guerrilla art piece (stashing it on toy aisles of stores), it would be really nice if there were more to it... it's a student project, though, so, whatever.

Any time we're talking about Barbie art, or "feminist" art, or any sort of work whose purpose as social commentary leaps to the surface when you look at it - I think the best way to get a handle on it is to look at it primarily AS ART. And give it the same critical reading that you would give any art piece. And hold it to the same standards as any other artwork. Some would disagree. But it's a way in to the discussion that tends to be more productive, IMO.

I don't think it's a very successful work, and I think what undermines it is the text on the back of the box. The doll itself is ambiguous. One of the ways that art-school critiques often go is that participants suggest, "What if..." - trying to see what other approaches or modifications would get closer to what the artist intended, or make it more meaningful to a viewer. What if the piece were just the doll? What if the piece was just a video showing the doll being constructed from the pieces of the other dolls? What if it were a whole Barbie house full of modified Barbies? What confines the piece, what might "offend," is the fact that the box text instructs us that this Barbie is a mockery. It's a mockery of some idea of the self-centered, status-obsessed, flaky pregnant teenager. (Can someone show me that girl? I've never met one.) That sneering first-person voice - "that grumpy clinic nurse" - that says, Girls are stupid. Girls don't have a fucking clue. And that's offensive. Pregnant Barbies are not offensive. Attaching text that so pointedly asserts the artist-maker's superiority over what they're depicting, that doesn't leave room for ambiguity and thought in the viewer - that's lazy. That's offensive.

If this piece were really well made, it might actually do some of what Samhita wants to happen - engaging people in a discussion about what girlhood and pregnancy is about. Good work makes you see something you did not see before. This piece does not do that. It only confirms the existence of stories you've heard before. And that cannot inspire action.

I think I should show this picture of another fictional Barbie. Abortion Clinic Barbie:

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a156/BTCloud/000AbortionBarbie.jpg

I think I should show this picture of another fictional Barbie. Abortion Clinic Barbie:

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a156/BTCloud/000AbortionBarbie.jpg

absolutely, cakeoftheisles.

This could be really effective if it showed the reality of the situation after Barbie has her baby. Barbie should have dark circles under her eyes from sleep deprivation, and be shown sitting at home with the baby while her friends are all at the mall. There should be a slide of Barbie heading off to the alternative school where they have a daycare. Here she is hauling the baby in the carseat, along with the diaper bag, breast pump, and her backpack full of books in and out of the Barbie Jeep while trying to maintain her perfect clothes, hair, and makeup. Oh, and what about her clothes? Instead of her usual tight-fitting clothes she'll find herself wearing baggy sweats and spit-up stained T-shirts for the first few months until her body returns to normal. On prom night all of her friends will dress up and head out to party all night while she sits in the rocking chair burping the baby... Yeah, it's glamorous alright.

P.S. I love being a mom, but do feel kinda resentful when all my friends are down at the bar without me, and I didn't have a kid until I was 35! Ha.

I think what most people forget about art is that it both reflects and criticizes the artists culture. It's not necessarily supposed to shock, or provide answers- usually it's just to spark a question, if anything at all.
So, to me, if there is anything offensive about this piece it's that our society operates in this manner.
And that people are so dismissive of student works.

Barbie isn't representing and unrealistic 'peachy' American dream. She's showing us that we can do anything at all; humanity's dream.
As for this doll, I kind of think its funny. Barbie says you can be anything, from a cheerleader to a doctor, but theres other avenues unexplored by Barbie because no one wants them. Especially now, in a time when girls watching Juno decide to race to get pregnant with 'pregnancy pacts' its revealing something else that girls seem to be aspiring too. These aspirations are as ridiculous as the doll itself, which is what makes the doll such a good piece.

I understand that this could be taken as satire (although it just disgusts me), but who is the target audience here? The whole mattel company is pretty fucked, from the misogynist body images they feed young girls to the way that they economically strangle the women (young girls, rather) who work in their factories overseas. Why is it ok to freak out about the body image problems that Barbie sets into our culture, but not youth pregnancy? There is nothing wrong with having a child as a teenager. However, the chances are that if a teenager becomes a mother, her life will be much harder. Financially, socially, you name it. Teen mothers are incredibly brave, and their accomplishments deserve more credit than a Barbie making it look easy and glamorous.

btw, Rachel in WY, I love your post.

It's art. It's clever. There's a sense of irony involved. It's funny. It gets people talking. It's effective. Really - c'mon people. There's nothing offensive about this piece of work. It's supposed to be provocative. In fact, in its own small way, it's quite brilliant.

I think that some people here are missing the point. It's not Barbie 'glamorizing' pregnancy. It's a tongue-in-cheek barb at the phenomena of both Barbie's glamorization of *fricken everything*, and the MEDIA's glamorization/exploitation of celebrity teen pregnancy. No-one's saying that pregnant young women don't do it tough, and aren't brave. The piece of art isn't about that. You kinda have to scratch the surface here, just a tiny bit. Just a tiny little bit.

Some people seem really tangled up about this hehe

Come on... it's social satire. I highly doubt this person is "glamorizing" teen pregnancy.

On the other hand though, it DOES start discussion, and in many circles of American society, people would just rather pretend teen pregnancy doesn't happen.

So on one hand, it reminds us all who live in reality of our priorities and responsibilities to ourselves, and on the other (for those who live in la la land) it throws the windows wide open to a serious taboo issue in American society.

Ultimately, it challenges all of us to examine our world.

Oh and, I lol'ed IRL.

"She's so happy she didn't listen to that grumpy old nurse at the clinic."

So is this supposed to satirize teenage girls who think babies are dolls that will make them adults/provide unconditional love (yes, I know guys are involved--lucky them, they get to walk away) and dismiss "grumpy old nurses," parents, whomever...

Or is this a satire of a society who (apparently) doesn't supply enough "grumpy old nurses" to people who may not be able to take primary responsibility for a child?

No one is going to discuss the real phenomenon of people who don't plan on how they can provide for their children and eschew birth control/"want" to have kids even when they have access to contraception (if not to birth control, to condoms, which are more affordable than children)? The reality of many people who "want" kids even when they can't support themselves and don't anticipate the time and effort it takes to care for an infant?