“Are you a Barbie girl?” A diachronic qualitative study on how Barbie’s image changed between 2000-2019, based on the brand’s advertising.

In this day and age, more brands tend to engage with inclusive advertising campaigns in order to stay relevant and competitive in the market. One of these brands responding to the trend towards inclusion and diversity is Barbie. The popular doll has been criticized for promoting a single type of femininity based on stereotypes regarding appearance and roles. Despite the social influence that Barbie may have on young girls’ perceptions with regard to female images and roles, the brand has been extremely successful for over 5 decades. In 2012, however, Barbie’s sales have started dropping significantly, a fact that paved the way for Mattel, the manufacturing company behind Barbie, to change the doll’s branding strategy. As a result, since 2015, Mattel aims to break the stereotypical representation of women and ‘to better reflect the world girls see today’, by adding dolls with diverse skin tones, body types and hairstyles. This thesis investigates whether the changes that the doll brand has incorporated are apparent in the brand’s advertising campaigns over the years. Thus, the research question ‘How has femininity been constructed in Barbie’s advertising campaigns between 2000-2019?’ is raised. To answer this research question, thematic analysis was implemented on a total of 100 video advertisements (5 per year) for Barbie by Mattel, in order for the researcher to observe the gradual shift regarding femininity within the time period of interest. This thematic analysis resulted in six main themes, which were combined to provide an answer to the research question. In general, it was found that the construction of femininity through the adverts of the brand has undergone significant changes after 2015. Although white Caucasian features, sexiness, thinness and attentive looks were prominent features of femininity until 2015, femininity, after 2015, is constructed through diversity in ethnicity, body types and looks. The shift of the doll brand is not limited to female images; stereotypically female roles and activities related to outward appearance or to personality attributes like emotional, nurturing, and concerned with people and relationships that were predominant in the years 2000-2015, were gradually less observed after 2015. Overall, it could be said that despite the changes that were observed through the process of thematic analysis, there are still various types of women that are not represented through the dolls of the brand.