This is a summary of the op-ed “Barbie is a Metaverse” by Leah Callon-Butler, published on CoinDesk on August 10, 2023.
Barbie has stood the test of time. She has given generations of women the courage to dream and forge their own paths. However, Barbie isn’t just one of the most iconic and best-selling toys in the world, she expands the limits of imagination. This is why Barbie has more in common with virtual reality headsets than other toys, as Emfarsis Director Leah Callon-Butler wrote in her op-ed “Barbie is a Metaverse” for CoinDesk.
Leah references Herman Narula’s book Virtual Society, which fleshes out the definition of the Metaverse as the experiences and social interactions within it. Barbie, like anything else in the Metaverse, “expands the world’s parameters, and these realms, effectively, come to life.” Anyone with a Barbie doll is given free rein to design their lives, regardless of societal conventions. This was especially powerful in the earliest years of Barbie’s existence, when women were expected to exist solely in a domestic context. Today, there’s a Barbie fit for all dreams. As Leah put it, Barbie was a flight attendant in 1961. By 1990, she was “flying the damn plane.”
For all of the Metaverse’s technological innovation, its true value is in how it gives people the opportunity to shape their own narratives in cyberspace. As a concept that spans multiple interconnected worlds, people can exist simultaneously as an astronaut, popstar, and President of the United States.. As Herman Narula wrote in his book, this understanding of worlds beyond our physical reality has existed in human history, dating back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
“Barbie’s fluctuating influence only underscores how she is, indeed, a Metaverse. Her world of make-believe relies on the faith of its participants to breathe life into the social construct. As long as we believe that her world has meaning, then it is real, and there can be mutual exchange of value between the spheres.”
Leah eventually talks about Barbie’s fluctuating influence with the rise of an increasingly woke postmodern society that has criticized Barbie for her unrealistic body image and perpetuation of gender stereotypes. She relies on her believers to will her into existence, much like how Narula explores how people have thought less of the afterlife after global living standards improved. Even then, this fluctuation only underscores the truth that she is a Metaverse.
Read the full article here: “Barbie is a Metaverse” by Leah Callon-Butler. Published August 10, 2023 on CoinDesk.
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