The Doll Project

Is Barbie to blame for giving girls body image issues, or are there larger forces at work? The Doll Project explores the influence of visual culture and societal norms while caricaturing and satirizing unattainable standards of beauty. In a world where girls gather online to remind each other that "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" and diet ads ask "what will you gain when you lose," even Barbie is never thin enough. The Doll Project dramatizes this quest for perfection in miniature. Each picture tells a story from my perspective as an ambivalent doll collector who has a love/hate relationship with the fashion industry.



The photographs in this series show how both the iconic fashion doll and the fashion world around her have changed in the decades since her introduction, and culminate in a dynamic poster designed to remind women and girls to love and accept themselves no matter what they look like.