The Architect Barbie Conundrum
The world’s most popular doll, with a hot-pink blueprint tube and a hard hat: friend or foe to a profession already suffering from a pronounced gender gap?
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Since the moment I received my first press release on the "Barbie I Can Be… Architect Doll" (for short, "Architect Barbie"), launched at the 2011 American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Convention, I had a consistently negative response. What does Barbie have to do with architecture? I wondered. Future female architects should be playing with tools for building, not dolls inappropriate for use as scale figures. Also: Why isn’t she wearing flats?
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Alexandra Lange
Alexandra Lange is a critic, journalist and architectural historian based in Brooklyn.
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