BARBIE AND THE PINKIZATION PHENOMENON:

a look at cultural artifacts and social control of gender

Abstract

This article addresses the pinkization process and the social control of gender present in the current cultural and educational context, a social phenomenon intensified by cultural artifacts linked to Barbie. Explores media discourses and their strategies for constructing the doll's role, problematizing a process that uses many devices to maintain the gender order, a strictly binary order. It analyzes these cultural artifacts, as well as their representations of values ​​and ways of living, in the constitution of femininities, as well as masculinities. It questions how such cultural objects participate in the construction of identities since childhood, conveying discourses and intentions, in the construction of accepted and desirable behaviors, representations of beauty, ideal bodies and popularity. In this proposal, the interconnection between Cultural Pedagogies and Gender Studies helps to transform the view of contemporary socialization processes, reflecting on the various relationships, such as socio-cultural, political and economic ones. An exercise that allows the construction of other perspectives, revealing clues and concerns to reflect on how society has been dealing with gender differences in childhood, as well as in adult life, based on a social order of gender.