Cultural artifact: Chinese Barbie
Posted on by Jason Li
From Toys365, a China production: 可儿娃娃, a Chinese Barbie-like doll:
Here’s the official Mattel one, circa 1994 (courtesy of Barbie Collector Showcase):
A group blog about Chinese tech, media and design
From Toys365, a China production: 可儿娃娃, a Chinese Barbie-like doll:
Here’s the official Mattel one, circa 1994 (courtesy of Barbie Collector Showcase):
Very interesting how the eyes are still wide– not entirely reflective of general eye-shape of asians.
Very anime/manga-esque.
Heh. Taken another way though, wide-eyes are just a symbolic representation of eyes (based on a circle). Think about it – thin Chinese eyes are normal to a Chinese person, so there’s no desire to have them drawn as deviant from the norm (i.e. drawn as crescent shapes as opposed to circular).
To put it simply, I grew up in Hong Kong not being concerned with representing white people as “wide-eyed” and Chinese people as “slanty-eyed.”
Sidenote: It is true that in some historical instances of art (woodcuts being an example) the eyes are drawn thinner or more Chinese, so perhaps anime IS reponsible for pushing it towards a “wider” more circular eye shape.