A set of black and white photos will cast light upon Barbie’s moments of pain just one month before the doll’s 53rd birthday.
Starting Tuesday, the photos by Kari Gunter-Seymour, photographer and Ohio University alumna, will be on display in the OU Women’s Center. Seymour said the photos are meant to show what could be behind Barbie’s more glamorous side.
In one picture, Barbie is lying on the floor with her belly looking rounder and chocolate wrapping paper scattered all over.
“Ken didn’t show up on Valentine’s Day, so she ate a whole box of chocolates and felt really awful,” Seymour said. “That’s what I’m trying to do. To show that even glamorous Barbie has very unglamorous days.”
Growing up as an overweight child and adolescent in the 1960s with Barbie, Midge and Ken, Seymour said she wasn’t aware of the dolls’ impact on her self-esteem until she was older.
“I lived vicariously through these dolls, because I would never wear those kinds of glamorous clothes,” Seymour said. “I realized in hindsight that they made me feel pretty bad about myself.”
Since the 1960s, fashion models started to become thinner and thinner, Seymour said.
“They are tall and gorgeous, and I applaud them,” Seymour said. “But most of us are shorter and some of us are pudgier and we are perfectly happy except our culture tells us that you have to be thin and really skinny and beautiful for us to love you.”
Seymour will visit the OU Women’s Center to talk about her works on Feb. 10. Kris Williams, a professor at Hocking College and a poet and managing editor for the literary journal Riverwind, will also read three poems about Barbie by Lyn Lifshin, an American poet, during the reception.
“Both (Seymour and Lifshin) have given a new interpretation of Barbie,” Williams said. “They were trying to use a completely different way to bring Barbie to life.”
Seymour said she believes that the most important thing for a woman is to love herself so that she could take very good care of her body.
“I hope people can relate to at least one of the images,” Seymour said. “I want them to walk out and feeling really good about how they look, how they feel and who they are.”
sw454711@ohiou.edu
