Plastic bodies: Beings-not-of-the-world

Franklin, Alex

Abstract

Employing a Heideggerian phenomenology of Being, this paper will argue that toys such as Bratz dolls, Barbie, and Disney Princesses contribute to an environment that fosters an ‘unnatural’ relationship between pre-adults and their ‘bodily nature’; arguably promoting an inauthentic, ideologically determined bodily schema via their design, embedment in anthropomorphising narratives, virtual worlds and attendant prescriptive forms of play, which contributes to a consumer culture that promotes early self-objectification by girls and young women
Further, it will be contended that young girls in particular are encouraged to conceive of their body as social ‘equipment’ and, as such, a ‘thing’ that is necessarily subject to socially sanctioned, volitive modifications. It will be argued that this results in an individual’s everyday relationship with their body lacking the directed, authentic concern necessary to be a fully ‘embodied’ being; that this results in the body being conceived of as social ‘equipment’; and that the assimilation of an inauthentic ‘they-self’ at a young age negatively effects their ability to be fully authentic and ‘embodied’ Beings-in-the-world.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: II International Conference: The Texts of the Body - Generating Bodies: Discursive Sexed Productions
• Start Date: Nov 30, 2010
• End Date: Dec 3, 2010
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Bratz, Heideggerian phenomenology, embodiment
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/973383
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : II International Conference: The Texts of the Body - Generating Bodies: Discursive Sexed Productions