Would the real Barbie please stand up...

[freetoaster]

Okay people let's strain our over-taxed pop culture preoccupied brains on this one. My assignment is to come up with a new identity for "Barbie" that makes some sort of social commentary. I have found "Gangsta Bitch Barbie" and images of Barbie holding her 9 mm as well as Barbie strapped with a belt of TNT. This image popped up tonight.

http://phil.rucus.net/barbie%20pics/Council%20Estate%20Barbie.jpg

Maybe it will help generate some random ideas. I am in hopes that I can actually come up with something funny and disturbing through this project. Any input, however seemingly unrelated, appreciated.

I will post the completed final image when I am done.

[karmattack]

Dress her up like the Virgin Mary, and then give her nipples.

[TLS]

Well, you could do what I used to do with my barbies, and die her hair with your mom's bingo dabbers and dress her in a small outfit and give her a popstar name like Pink, Gwen or Brittany.

Or you could just dress her in a slip and call her the Paris Barbie.

[karmattack]

Give her plastic surgery scars, overly poofy lips, obviously enhanced breasts and name her "Becoming Barbie."

[DarthMaulRat]

You need Barbie's 10 year old kid sister that dresses like a whore and talks about sex constantly even though she's not exactly sure what it is. Comes with a free YM magazine!

[FanGirl]

Dress her in a straight jacket and call her multiple personality Brbie, which explains all the other Barbi idenities.

[freetoaster]

Just found this twisted piece of happiness.
http://www.transworldmotocross.com/mx/content/images/sept03/091803barbie.jpg

I like the "becoming Barbie" idea a lot. It has the potential to encompass enough references as to stay open for interpretation. It has a nice sound to it too. I am not sure how far I should push the idea though. My instructor is female and there are only two other guys in the class. I have to present it as a sort of sales pitch. Packaging, accessories and physical environment will all be part of the marketing strategy.
I would like to push this to some truly twisted laugh-until-you-cry kind of end, but my class is about 85 % female. My sense of what is funny can be sort of disturbing.
I really don't want offend any of the women in my class, so I guess it will have to be diluted a little if I go with the wanna be whore-like little sister thing.
I like the nipples on the Virgin Mary idea too. That is almost instantly offensive, and I want something that has immediate physical impact. I was thinking last night that an almost a purely visceral experience would be nice. Sort of like a woman in traditional Moslem head-scarf pressing her bare breasts together in mock seduction, while staring back in disgust at your perverted preoccupation with her boobs. It is the lingering unanswered questions that arise from the idea that will make it worth a second look. Hmmmmm... nipples on the Virgin Mary, that is good.







How about blunt Barbie?
http://www.pregnancy.org/photo/data/500/281bad_ass_barbie.jpg

She tells it like it is.

It would be daring to mix the sacred and the profane together, but I don't want to offend someone's religious beliefs that I am going to be sitting next to for the next two months. If I do water it down though that might be worse. It could be as priceless as the smells of rotting vegetables and stale beer wafting from a dumpster you pass on the first perfect day of spring. You have a hangover. It makes you stall, cringe and vomit. You feel better after the quick puke, but that awful stench stays in your memory as thick as lumpy gravy on a dry biscuit.

So the immediacy of say soft-core porn could blend humorously with the cerebral effect of say, prayer?

"Who'd uh thunk what Barbies been up to lately?"

Keep 'em coming...

[TLS]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
How about blunt Barbie?

[/ QUOTE ]
Until I scrolled down, I pictured something quite different.

[Omaru]

barbie with permanent marker over her eye to make it look like she was punched (or blue biro, eventually you can smear it to a purple color.)
Then I guess you can get some black insulation tape and put some around the waist to make a pvc mini skirt, same but around the bust to make a pvc boob tube, smear lipstick or red ink on her lips and use some grease, hair wax or whatever to make the hair appear greasy. optional red plastic jacket from another barbie and et viola crackwhore barbie. might want to use elastic band for the arm with optional red mark indicating injection incision.

[DangerSeeker]

Modern Woman Defeminized Barbie - A Barbie completely absent of all of the social stereotypes forced upon women. She comes with unflattering unisex grey-tone clothes, a short but not butch hairstyle, reduced breasts, a few extra pounds, some text books, some take-out food bags, and more!

Built-in magnets polarized adversely to those found in innocuous co-worker Ken will keep him a safe distance away, because the idea that a woman needs a man in her life to do anything but coallate papers is repulsive. Besides, a Ken should be attracted to her... wait, what have we left?

[freetoaster]

Good idea in your defemization idea. I have been working out an even more somber take on Barbie's identity. I have a working title for the idea that encompasses much, but isn't as daring as the aroused Virgin Mary.

Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor Barbie.

She comes with over-size sweats, remote control, prozac and ice cream. Her isolation and reliance on meds to promote change just haven't paid off, and well a television sounds do-able. Why go out anyway?

[Omaru]

G.I barb, barbie in action man clothing brandishing firearm and crew cut or shaved head, camou facepaint and dogtags, durt scuffs on the cheeks and bloodtrail from the mouth, if that doesn't work, similar I dea but have her being tortured by action men, lying on the floor, kicked in the stomach, face being stepped on, typical torture thing, that could be quite controversial, I think rape would be one step too far though.

[DangerSeeker]

Yes, simple violence toward women is still on this side of the line of good taste.