Barbie in the Media: The Transmedia Presence of Mattel's Celebrity Doll

by Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez (Editor), Rebecca C. Hains (Editor)

Overview

What is the significance of Barbie’s journey from toy aisles to screens? Barbie in the Media offers a groundbreaking exploration of Barbie as a transmedia phenomenon. In examining the brand’s multifaceted media presence, this volume’s chapters consider both Mattel’s corporate storytelling about and fans’ reinterpretations of the iconic doll. Collectively, they reveal that these mediated negotiations of Barbie reflect and contribute to broader discourses about gender and identity in evolving sociopolitical contexts—inscribing the doll with ever-changing (and often conflicting) anxieties and dreams. These render the brand’s media presence a fascinating site of contested meaning, worthy of the sustained critique that Barbie in the Media offers readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031899003
Publisher:	Springer Nature Switzerland
Publication date:	07/30/2025
Pages:	472
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez is a professor of English (Youth Literatures & Cultures) at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA. She has authored and co-edited numerous books and articles, including An American Icon in Puerto Rico: Barbie, Girlhood, and Colonialism at Play (2022); Islas Lectoras: Bibliografía infantil puertorriqueña (2023); and The Cultural Legacy of Disney: A Century of Magic (2024).

Rebecca C. Hains is a professor of Media & Communication at Salem State University, USA. She is an author and co-editor of numerous books and articles on children’s media culture, including Growing Up With Girl Power: Girlhood on Screen and in Everyday Life (2012); The Princess Problem (2014); Cultural Studies of LEGO: More than Just Bricks (2019); and Supernatural Youth in Media (2025).

Table of Contents

1. Transcending the Toy Aisle: Understanding Barbie as a Transmedia Phenomenon.- Animating Plastic Girlhood: The Aesthetics of Barbie in Life in the Dreamhouse and Vlogs.- 3. Disrupting the Canon: Animated Barbie and the Adapted Nineteenth Century Novel.- 4. Dolls’ Best Friends: Barbie in Communion with Animals in Direct-to-DVD Animated Films.- 5. Building Barbie Media: A Model for Doll Based Media Franchises.- 6. Demystification of a Living Doll: Semiotics in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.- 7. An Unintentional and Playful Allegory: Barbie and the Rockers and the Gender Identity Crisis of Reagan’s America.- 8. Hey There, Barbie Girl!: The Subversion of Mattel’s Commodified Femininity in a 1990s Riot Grrrl.- 9. Barbie’s Evolution from Aryan Ideal to Diversity Advocate: A Study of How Eurocentric Bias Remain Challenges in Branding and Transmedia Marketing.- 10. The Veiled Barbie, the Disfigured Barbie, the Miniskirt Barbie: Reflections on Negotiating Conservative Muslims’ Fatwas on Mattel’s Doll Fatima Alharthi.- 11. Images from the West: Barbie as a Cultural Ambassador in Early 1990s Romania.- 12. Frida Kahlo and Cultural Inclusivity: Comparing US and International Media Coverage of Mattel’s Inspiring Women Doll.- 13. Music and Photo-adventures, Romance, and Friendship in Barbie, tu revista [Barbie Magazine]: Transnational Cultural Consumption in the Emergence of Female Preteen Readers.- 14. Muse Magic Ken: How Barbie’s Boyfriend Inspires Queer Filmmaking.- 15. Barbie Takes Control: The Irony of Manipulation in Todd Haynes’ Superstar.- 16. Barbie the Girl-maker: Transgender Girls, their Mothers, and the Whole Barbie Thing.- 17. Barbie Girls in a Barbie World: Making a Transgressive Icon in Contemporary Art.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The range and depth of scholarship found in the 17 chapters of Barbie in the Media: The Transmedia Presence of Mattel's Celebrity Doll make the strongest argument ever for what could be termed Critical Barbie Studies. Informed by more than three decades of research on Barbie (now Barbie at 66) as a cumulative cultural text and representing such a diverse collection of researchers and artists, the collection brings together an extravaganza of method and methodology in girl-focused feminist transmedia studies. These methods include textual readings, autoethnography and memory work studies, ethnographies, transnational perspectives, work directly with girls, and arts-based research. I have been known to borrow on more than one occasion the expression “And I want to thank you Barbie”. But now I want to write “And I want to thank you, Emily Aguiló-Pérez and Rebecca Hains!”
- Claudia Mitchell, Distinguished James McGill Professor, McGill University

Barbie in the Media is an essential reading for undergraduate courses on girl cultures, media cultures, and popular culture. The editors’ scholarly essays are informed yet accessible, setting the bar for the content and tone of the contributions. The well-selected essays are from a broad range of authors in terms of cultures, disciplines, genders, and geography and use a variety of methods. The length would fit well with a typical university term. One important dimension of the editors’ approach is their manifest pleasure in Barbie culture, signaled at the outset by their inclusion of playful images of themselves in Barbie photo booths. This tone enhances the scholarly chapters and invites creative, critical making projects by students.
- Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Language and Literacy Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, The Pennsylvania State University

In these dazzling pages, readers will find cross-cultural insights and many surprises, with Barbie as a springboard for transmedia interrogations that draw on transdisciplinary methods, from textual and cultural analysis, to autoethnography, queer film studies, and black feminist visual theory, to name just a few. Together, these essays persuasively demonstrate how “Barbie is not exclusively a corporate commodity or a target of scholarly critique; the doll and her image are also a catalyst for creativity and cultural commentary.”
- April Lidinsky, Ph.D., Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Indiana University South Bend

Vibrant and thought-provoking, Barbie in the Media is an exploration of one of our most iconic figures shaping cultural narratives around gender, race, class, and power. The book is full of insight and rich, original analysis of Barbie’s role across film, television, literature, and digital platforms. For scholars, fans, and cultural critics, a must read!
- Orly Lobel, award-winning author of The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future and You Don’t Own Me: How Mattel v. MGA Revealed Barbie’s Dark Side

Barbie in the Media is a must read - whether you are a scholar, fan, or both! The contributors and chapters brought together combine to offer a comprehensive take on the iconic toy in transmedia form. Imaginative, insightful and offering something entirely new on the globally adored doll, this collection will quickly become the key resource on Barbie for researchers in media studies, toys and children's culture.
- Lincoln Geraghty, Ph.D., Professor of Media Cultures, University of Portsmouth

Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez and Rebecca C. Hains' book makes a compelling case for the study of transmedia Barbie. By moving (largely) beyond the toys’ original plastic form, they suggest the cultural plasticity of the Barbie phenomenon. From Saudi Arabia to Romania, from fascist marketing to Do-It-Yourself Punk resistance, and from print to digital, we are expertly guided through a landscape of reinvention, resistance and stasis. Recommended!
- Neil Cocks, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Literary Perspective, University of Reading