Remember when BUST covered the “Fallen Princesses” photo collection? Well, Dina Goldstein, the mastermind behind the depictions of modern day princesses, has just broken into the Barbie Dreamhouse –and is taking no prisoners.
Don’t let the pink walls fool you: there is nothing pretty about the union between Barbie and Ken, especially when loverboy has a penchant for slipping on 6-inch stilettos while dreaming of a rendezvous with a muscular military man.
“I think Barbie is an idealised woman,” Goldstein told The Times of India. “More than any other childhood construct, Barbie encapsulates the concept that beauty is power and thus key to a happy life. However, when Ken, Barbie’s handsome but emasculated husband, pursues happiness by expressing his own individuality — that he’s gay, the value of beauty as a trait unto itself is exposed as the cheap, plastic facsimile that it is.”
Goldstein manages to cheekily challenge the conceptions and perceptions of not only beauty, but also of sexuality, romance and marriage, and of course what we know and deem as feminine and masculine.
This Barbie girl has a whole new Barbie world. So much for that Aqua song, huh?
Images courtesy of Dina Goldstein
