URCAD Selfie Contest Winner: The Women's Center

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 14:49:57 -0400

The URCAD Selfie Contest winner for Best Selfie with a Presentation: The presenters from the Women's Center: Ash Acuña, Tanzila Malik, Carrington Cline, Abby Claytor. They will receive a gift card to the UMBC Bookstore.

Even after the poster session ended, you could find these folx holding up their poster in the UC lobby and doing an impromptu presentation for people who missed it... now that's dedication to the feminist cause of analyzing Barbie!

White, Pink, and Pretty: How Barbie’s Feminism Fails its Viewers

Carrington Cline, Tanzila Malik, Abby Claytor, Nati Acuña, Media and Communications Studies
Lauren Allen, Women's Center; Amelia Meman, Women's Center

The 2023 film Barbie (Gerwig, 2023) is the highest-grossing live-action comedy film of all time; it has been lauded as a feminist film that cunningly subverts gender roles and thoughtfully addresses issues of diversity that are fraught in most Hollywood films. Barbie is an easily digestible media that portrays basic feminist principles for the general public. But if Barbie is a feminist film, is it also intersectional? This study examines the limitations of the Barbie movie’s portrayal of feminism and its failings in regard to intersectionality. We aim to inspire critical thinking around media and intersectionality and shed light on the prevalence of White feminism in popular media. Using content analysis informed by intersectional feminist theory, we analyzed instances in the film that demonstrated (pseudo-)feminist principles and themes in order to determine how intersectional Barbie’s brand of feminism is. We also explored avenues by which Barbie could better depict intersectionality and contemporary feminist thought.