Sunday, April 12, 2009

Our Babies, Ourselves by Emily Prager

Emily Prager's, "Our Babies, Ourselves", is an article that is exclusively criticizes the mixture between gender and toys, in particularly Barbie. Prager starts off with a small anecdote about reading over the obituary of Jack Ryan, in which she learned that he was the creator of Barbie. Her argument  focused mainly on the physical features of Barbie. Prager suggested that Barbie was poorly proportion because of her "bustiness" and tiny waistline. Flashing back to her past, Prager tells of her anxiousness to know exactly who was Barbie's creator. After learning that Barbie's sculptor was a man, Prager comments that knowing that "a woman didn't design Barbie makes me [her] a whole lot saner'. As Prager starts to discover the motive for her physical appearance, she uses numerous amounts of rhetorical questions to analytically come up with a reason about why Jack Ryan felt the need to expose Barbie, but make "Ken with that truncated, unidentifiable lump at his groin". 

Application: Considering on how female dolls looked before the existence of Barbie, why do you think there was a change in the female doll's figure? 

Style: Hows does Prager's style promote a sense of disapprove? 

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