Friday News: Bezos, Mills & Boon, Barbie, and bullshit
Publishing Newsadult coloring books / Barbie / Cold War / Jeff Bezos / journalism / Mattel / Mills & Boon / political propaganda / technology / washington post13 Comments
Bezos says Washington Post to ‘lean into future’ – So The Washington post should advance technologically but retain its “soul.” What does that mean, exactly?
Under Bezos, the Post has ramped up its technology to allow its website to perform better, with improved analytics which gauge how readers are responding and deliver relevant advertising.
It has also made its articles more widely available through social network news services operated by Facebook and Google, and boosted its own social media efforts.
Post publisher Frederick Ryan said the Post was now “a media and technology company” and that Bezos “has given us runway to experiment with new ways to engage with readers and the resources to expand our newsroom and our engineering team.” – Yahoo!
Mills & Boon enters adult colouring-in market – The cynic in me is amazed this didn’t happen sooner. I also wonder if the next product is going to be crayons for adults. Bring on the Mills & Boon pastels and colored pencils (they can be packaged with Harlequin wine – drink and color!).
The colouring book will record the most iconic Mills & Boon moments since it was founded in 1908, documenting “the history of romance, fashion and social change across the last century”. – The Bookseller
Can Barbie shake the very branding that made it successful in the first place? A brand so powerful, even preschool girls can recognize it on sight? And, more to the point, should it? Mattel, obviously, is hoping they are nimble enough to ride out changing tastes. But maybe Barbie has outlived her usefulness. Maybe girls are more interested in, and better off with, the myriad of other toys available to them: Action figures and American Girls, Legos and GoldieBlox, My Little Pony and her filly friends.
Then again, there is the case to be made that by creating more variety among the dolls, Mattel is bringing Barbie back to its roots as much as it services modern sensibilities. In Handler’s 1994 autobiography, Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story, she wrote: ”My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.” – Think Progress
No deals with Satan perhaps? Misspelt call to avoid becoming fishmongers?
I’ve always thought Barbie was an awesome toy. Playing with her as a child never made me want to look like her, I knew she was unrealistic. But my Barbies could be anything and went on kickass adventures and were not limited by the patriarchy. I had like 40 Barbies and 5 Kens so there were plenty of lesbian romances. Before I even knew about lesbians.
Barbie is to me a great toy for that reason-she doesn’t have a story or personality attached to her. She can do whatever the little girl wants her to do. Also, she’s been president and a veterinarian and a doctor and an astronaut and a million other careers so I’ve always seen her as a positive role model.
I can’t believe that Frederick Ryan could say all that with a straight face. The comments section on WaPo work so poorly that it’s not funny. The headlines have become very click-baity. The ads create problems when downloading the site.
The WaPo site is kind of a mess, actually. It’s visually less appealing than before, the content is pretty paltry, and it’s glitchy as hell and freezes up all the time. As a longtime subscriber, my main interests are local news and political coverage–both of which I largely get elsewhere now–and the weather blog. I read it so little these days that I’m on the verge of cancelling. Really, procrastination and lethargy are the only reasons I still subscribe. (And I’m not a Bezos hater by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I had hopes that he was the white knight with deep pockets that WaPo needed.)
And speaking of glitchy, I don’t know if this is just me, but the DA comments have looked weird recently, with the name/date on the left and the comments portion on the right not lining up and displaying properly.
@Susan: No, not just you. It was driving me crazy but it’s OK today.
I guess adult coloring books fill the void that women once filled with embroidery and knitting. Something artistic to do with your hands.
@SAO: I’ve been thinking of them as the 21stC version of paint-by-numbers kits, but I like your explanation better.
I still have such a soft spot in my heart for Barbie, but I’ve found the current version of them scarily scarecrow-like–not that I expect them to look like real people, but they seem fragile and, well, sickly. Of course, my hands were much tinier when I had Barbies of my own.
I don’t know that the old-style Barbies (of which I had an ridiculous number) made me consciously worry about body image. But I do distinctly remember that whenever I saw a non-super-skinny, non-white, non-blonde off-brand “Barbie” doll I’d grab it and beg desperately to have it. (And my parents seemed to be grateful to be able to provide it.) I might not have been able to articulate why, when I was a tiny kid or preteen, but I knew I badly wanted a range of different types of people to populate the weirdly elaborate doll-playing I did with my friends and cousins.
One of the non-Barbie dolls was an muscular-looking, dark-complexioned, short-haired female doll with articulated joints, that basically became the American Ninja Warrior competitor character of the doll universe. I wish I could remember what doll/company that was!
@Carolyne: “But I do distinctly remember that whenever I saw a non-super-skinny, non-white, non-blonde off-brand “Barbie” doll I’d grab it and beg desperately to have it. (And my parents seemed to be grateful to be able to provide it.) I might not have been able to articulate why, when I was a tiny kid or preteen, but I knew I badly wanted a range of different types of people to populate the weirdly elaborate doll-playing I did with my friends and cousins.”
Me too! I remember really wanting diversity in my Barbie family. I would have loved having a range of body types too. I think the uniformity of Barbies was dispiriting. Even the very, very few black Barbies always had Caucasian features. My sister wanted disabled Barbies and would put some of hers in casts or wheelchairs. A friend of ours shaved one of her Barbie’s heads and put a tattoo on it. We loved the non-Barbie competitors because they allowed us a little more difference for our collection.
I enjoy the title of this article as much as the sub-titles, which is to say a lot. *dances to Aqua*
I didn’t have Barbies, but my younger sisters did. My brother and I kidnapped them on a regular basis with our ninja turtles and GI Joes. I just recall them being naked all the time because I guess clothes were too hard to put on them for little fingers? It just makes me laugh thinking of their doll house full of nekkid Barbie.
I’ve been enjoying a couple of adult colouring books, both as something that makes my mind go “ahhhh” (a lot like embroidery does, but with 100% less cats attempting to eat my supplies) and as a therapeutic tool. My therapist loves them and has been supplying them in her office waiting room for years, and I’m specifically working with gel pens a) because GLITTER and b) because I am making mistakes in permanent ink and THAT IS OKAY. Well. I’m learning to be okay with it. ;) As long as I don’t look at what like, real artists manage to do with the same pages I’m fine, heh. Fighting perfectionism in hobbies one flower petal at a time!
My therapist’s colouring books include: Unicorns are Jerks, Dinosaurs With Jobs, and Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace! and they are all amazing. I’ve been making do with a cheap one that is basically stock photos turned black and white (srsly, the credits are like, shutterstock, it’s weird) that has thick enough cardstock to let me do things double-sided in ink.
Oh. Fallout 4 taught me that nope, doesn’t matter how clean your home is, you’re effed, and that film was just… impressive.
@Lindsay: I have always been a fan of coloring books. Have quite a few adult and “kid” ones. Have you seen these erasable markers: http://amzn.to/1RUGwtA. I am kind of besotted with them, along with the highlighters and the gel pens. I only really like the ones from Japan, though.
And has anyone tried Zentangle? https://www.zentangle.com
@Lindsay: I love the Unicorns are Jerks coloring book!