The rhetoric of toys: Barbie for president

ABSTRACT

Since 1992, every presidential election cycle has featured a Barbie doll as a candidate in an effort to encourage little girls to learn about the American election process. The campaign itself has many rhetorical tools working in its favor: Barbie’s ability to incite ‘aspirational’ play has always been a fixture of her persona. The interactive website and public events launched by the campaign worked to enhance the sense of active identification that little girls felt toward the doll. However, the ridicule with which Barbie for President was received by the mainstream press may have completely invalidated the effort in the eyes of parents, whose buying power determined the success or failure of the educational effect. The criticism concludes that individual consumers faced with competing frames may interject their own perspectives into their interpretations of the doll, and may form their own opinions about the doll’s campaign.

KEYWORDS:

• Barbie
• rhetoric
• play
• gender studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Liz Sills received her PhD in Communication Studies from Louisiana State University and is currently an Assistant Professor at Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD. Her research focuses on rhetorics, philosophies, and pedagogies of comedy and humor. One of her analyses is featured in the 2013 Eisner Award-winning volume Black comics: Politics of race and representation. Various other projects have examined Twitter tweets as well as more traditional artifacts like jokes and funny novels or short stories. She enjoys teaching courses in public address, argumentation, and other forms of communication as well as offering workshops to the public about using funniness in everyday life. Currently, Sills serves as president of the Lighthearted Philosophers’ Society.

ORCID

Liz Sills http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7886-1626