Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of Global Communication Association, 2024, Marmara University, Istanbul, Türkiye: “Future(s) of Communication: Promises and Predicaments”, MUSTAFA SÜHEYLA NİL, ASLAN ALAATTİN, AKTAŞ SAFA GÖRKEM, GÖKTEPE ATAKAN, Editör, Kriter Yayınevi, İstanbul, ss.263-288, 2024
After the release of the Barbie movie simultaneously worldwide in 2023, the Barbie brand and consequently the "ideal" of femininity associated with Barbie became widespread globally and in Turkey, particularly through social media platforms, fostering a postmodern consumer culture. This study conducts a descriptive analysis of Barbie-themed posts made by female users on Instagram which is one of the significant social media platforms, to examine the femininities or discourses of femininity derived through Barbie consumer culture. It is argued that the new generation Barbie character, defined within a postfeminist and neoliberal discourse, becomes a part of our reality as a simulacrum performed by real women. Thus, a postmodern femininity identity in which the boundaries of reality are blurred is shown to society with every Barbie post while local or various excluded femininities can both make themselves visible and exist through this simulacrum, on the condition of being like Barbie. Instagram has become a kind of “spectacle” where all kinds of consumption are exhibited, as postmodernist thinkers imagine. It is analyzed that individuals both relate themselves to a hyperreal female identity and also emphasize their subjectivities by referencing to their different or excluded femininities.