This Week, Drown Barbie

Daena Title recently drowned Barbie in her backyard pool.

Along with the doll, Title was drowning the pressure to be Barbie, an “ideal woman” so unrealistic that, due to her total lack of body fat, couldn’t menstruate if she was a living person.

Now Title is showcasing the drownings in a series of photographs and paintings entitled “Drown the Dolls,” on display at Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Culver City, Calif beginning Saturday, Jan. 8.

“I remember playing with these Barbies and being very uncomfortable,” Title says of her childhood self. “There was something about them. They were smiling and sleek and smooth and naked, and you could do whatever you wanted to them and they were just silent and submissive. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, is this what’s on the other side of girlhood for me? Am I going to transform into this? Because I really don’t want to.'”

To celebrate the opening of the show, and to start a dialogue on the impact of Barbie on real women’s lives, Title and Ms. are asking people everywhere to share their Barbie stories on video. We want to hear from you! Record a short video of your Barbie story–did you have Barbies when you were a kid? Did you want them if you didn’t have them? How did you feel about them then, how do you feel about them now?–then send a YouTube link or movie file via email to shallett@msmagazine.com. We’ll be posting our favorites next week, and sharing a new celebrity video on the blog every day until the opening of “Drown the Dolls” this weekend.

We’re starting strong with a video from one of our favorite feminists, Camryn Manheim.

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Image via Big Imagination Group.

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About

Stephanie hails from Toronto, Canada. She is a Ms. writer, a master of journalism candidate and a hip hop dancer/instructor/choreographer. She got her start in feminist journalism at the age of 16 when she was a member of the first editorial collective at Shameless magazine—and she has never looked back.