Hannah McCann: And that's what I think bimbo aesthetics are about, too. But then it's like, "do you want to get married?" You could be just enjoying yourself, wearing 6 pounds of makeup on your face every day. It's interesting that so much feminist analysis has focused on makeover shows as super problematic and reinforcing patriarchal standards, but when you transpose that onto a makeunder show, you actually see how spectacular femininity is quite uncomfortable, unnatural and disruptive for people.īrittany Luse: That's funny because title is based upon marriage as the ultimate goal. And the whole point of this show is to give them a "makeunder." And they would take these women off the streets who, according to the show, were wearing too much makeup. There was an interesting show that I analyzed a few years ago out of the U.K. It really takes their gender as a performance. It's a much more dynamic way of understanding what's going into that presentation, rather than just saying, "oh, no, they're dupes of the patriarchy, too."īrittany Luse. And this is an interesting what is drag, and who is in drag, and what do we count as subversive. So, for example, Maya Padan's done this work on the Spice Girls how their aesthetic is actually so spectacular that it connects with this reading of them as drag. Hannah McCann: Yeah, there's this really fantastic concept coming out of critical femininity studies called spectacular femininity. The spectacular femininities of bimbos and Barbies Brittany Luse: Barbie is not just feminine, she's hyperfeminine, spectacularly feminine. You can project onto Barbie, to me that is more interesting than just saying that she's a problematic icon or she's some fantastic icon. I had two Barbies and a Ken: Ken was gay and the Barbies were a butch and a femme. She's not just this floating signifier that tells us how to look. And then there's feminist defense of Barbie as representing a Girlboss feminism. And so there's this feminist critique of Barbie as representing patriarchal femininity. But on the other hand, there is this idea that Barbie has been every occupation and she can do anything. Hannah McCann: She's fraught because she's seen to represent a model to which little girls should aspire, which is narrow. What makes Barbie such a fraught icon of femininity? I am seeing people fight every day online about what she represents. That's why it's so jarring to patriarchal frameworks that insist you prove yourself and keep up in a way that is perfect and up to certain standards.īrittany Luse: Our OG bimbo, Ms. Hannah McCann: It's about not having to engage with people who are demanding that you prove yourself, or demanding that you can intellectually keep up with them or compete with them. You'll see on BimboTok on TikTok, people saying, "Yeah, I'm stupid, I've got nothing in my head, I'm a slut." And unlike the original stereotype of cisgender, white, blonde women, you see on BimboTok people identifying as queer, all different kind of ethnicities and identifying explicitly as left wing or often Marxist.īrittany Luse: What is smart or what could be smart about having a "no thoughts head empty" approach to social critique - how does that work? Hannah McCann: In the 2020s, you have this change in the meaning of being a bimbo on social media where people are really working to reclaim the term "bimbo" specifically. On reclaiming the term 'bimbo' and its new meaningīrittany Luse: The meaning of bimbo has begun to change in the past few years. These excerpts have been edited for length and clarity. Follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for full interviews. The interview highlights below are adapted from an episode of It's Been A Minute. Host Brittany Luse and Hannah McCann, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne who specializes in critical femininity studies, explore how both Barbie and real-life bimbos are criticized for being bad role models, and yet this carefree, maximalist, feminine style may actually be a little subversive. But, Barbie's brand of hyperfeminine fun has been on the rise for years - especially online among left leaning femmes who call themselves bimbos and have been giving the term a new meaning. The Barbie movie has arrived and we seem to be reaching peak Barbie-mania.
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