We're Not Barbie Girls: Tweens Transform a Feminine Icon

"Reinventing Barbie" was a workshop for middle-school girls to discuss, critique, and reflect on the construction of female bodies and feminine identities in popular culture by remaking Barbie dolls. The workshop was designed to foster conversations with and among girls about what it means to be embodied as female in American culture. The girls reconstructed Barbies based on their reflections, and then they came together to discuss their dolls as expressions of their visions for transforming the feminine. The article analyzes the collaborative process of the workshop, which was grounded in women's studies scholarship and developed by an interdisciplinary group of feminist academics.