Social Commentary Barbie

Barbie plays Paris Hilton
A Utah artist's right to make naked Barbie photographs (okay, naked Barbie in a blender...naked tortilla wrapped and salsa covered Barbie in a casserole, baking in the oven) was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The matter was brought to 9th Circuit Court by Mattel after a lower court's decision that satirizing the Barbie was all right. Mattel feels that Tom Forsythe's images of naked Barbies being attacked by kitchen appliances "infringed on their copyrights and trademarks." The court of appeals said Barbies were "ripe for social comment," and Forsythe says the photographs express the "objectification of women" and "beauty myth." Gothamist bets Mattel would try to crack down on the little girls putting their Barbies and other dolls in weird sex situations if they could but considering that's what 99% of Barbie owners do, Mattel would eliminate their own market.

You can see some of Forsythe's Barbie art here. Of course, the most imaginative recent use of Barbie has been in a "safe for work" version of the Paris Hilton sex tape – that is, if naked Barbies are safe for work – from Millionaire Playboy.

Film director Todd Haynes made a film about Karen Carpenter's battle with anorexia, Superstar, using Barbies, but Richard Carpenter shut it down before Mattel got a chance to sink its teeth into it. See it here, via Illegal Art.

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Comments (3) [rss]

wow -- in the movie version... Lil would love this....

you can't discuss barbie art without mentioning Wheelchair Rebecca.

demographics: primarily 24-50, middle to upper middle class, college-educated, politically right of center, Judeo-Christian.

...with the world wide readership of my online column numbering in the millions...

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AND we're already getting one-thousand-four-hundred hits per day.

...and this is only our fourth day online.

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Amazon seems to be having some small difficulty in keeping the book available. Over the weekend, as soon as copies became available, they were gone. It appears that Amazon has linked directly to the publisher for sales! Twenty books sold out at the local Borders bookstore over the weekend! (I tried to warn them!)

I "visit over" numerous topics and schools of thought in my column, my book, and now, on the website. I would like to link to your website in order to provide more information to my many readers and fans. Please contact the webmaster here: morning coffee

The links are provided below.

Warren "Bones" Bonesteel
55 Crestview Drive
Rapid City,SD 57701
(605) 388-3005

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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1412034949/qid=1092652448/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-5237944-4015201?v=glance&s=books

...or go to the search box on Amozon's home page under 'Books', and input Bonesteel, Warren.

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http://www.cafeshops.com/wrbones

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http://morningcoffee.net/index.php

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This will make it easy for people to link to MorningCoffee:
http://www.morningcoffee.net/modules.php?name=Web_Links

When you use the above link, you will submit your link to Morning Coffee, and all we
have to do is to approve it. Your infomation will then be available to 1,400 hits per day...from around the world.


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"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society
than their abilities, and for this reason, the heart
should be cultivated with more assiduity than
the head." -Noah Webster

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