![]() I think the Barbiecore aesthetic that's going on is cool. I do genuinely feel drawn to it though, for me it seems like a good combination of extremely silly, suspiciously scam-y, and personally profound. It looks really surreal, so I really want to go, but it's pretty far away and tickets are expensive so we'll see. On the subject of Barbie being en vogue, I wanted to add that there's a world debut 7000 square foot Barbie exhibit in the Toronto suburbs right now. So I go back and forth on what the account means to me and where it fits into my life. Not to mention I wouldn't be able to afford therapy without my Patreon subscribers from the newsletter and everything, and a lot of those subscribers find out about me from Instagram. Like I feel connected to a lot of people and owe them a helpful narrative within all the chaos. Making memes and knowing people will see them often helps me process things in real time.Īs the following has grown, I've also been buoyed by this feeling that I have a responsibility to really give my best. It's still a handy trauma recovery strategy for me, because I have a hard time expressing how I feel. Plus it's not a job, I make a bit of money here and there but not enough to call it anything other than a hobby or compulsion. The DBF account is weird territory for me it's rewarding for me and has meaning for people, and I invest a lot of time and a lot of myself into it, but I also know how people use Instagram, like half paying attention to endless posts for split seconds totally knowing that Zuckerberg wants their brain in a vice. ![]() I'm trying to get away from being super self-deprecating, so I’m holding back from my natural inclination. We were just like, "Why are people following us? This is so sad." And I continued on using it as a place to vent after everyone else decided not to. It wasn't something that anyone was taking very seriously. Then we made a secret Instagram and didn't tell anyone, and that's what it was. ![]() My friends and I had a group chat and we were commiserating over some stuff that we wouldn't really be comfortable maybe sharing publicly, and we started making memes just to share in there. It used to be me with a couple friends, and then I just took it over pretty soon after that, so it's mostly been me. I started the account in, I want to say, 2016, a long time ago. ![]() There's an appeal in imagining a Barbie who's more comfortable in existential contradictions.Barbie can act as a lightning rod for a lot of existential anxieties that her creators never intended.”īelow, Jax talks about the creation of why Barbie is such a useful visual metaphor and the delightful surprise of finding likeminded people online: On taking off, and what it means now: “Beauty standards, consumerism, nostalgia. “There's a lot of fraught topics tied up with Barbie,” Jax says. As someone who uses Barbie dioramas in her most popular work, Jax breaks down Barbie’s meaning, and why she thinks her sometimes bleak work translates to Barbie fans so well: In uncertain times, Barbie presents a projection of safety, unshakeable femininity and unattainable perfection that both provides an end point to long for and a form to compare oneself to. While has been running since 2016, Barbie has had a recent resurgence in cultural visibility, from Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie movie to the continued popularity of Barbiecore in fashion and online. ![]() Speaking over Zoom with her miniature pug popping up in the frame, Jax wears a pink dress that matches the aesthetic of her work, and speaks thoughtfully about the ways in which creating that ever-evolving artform, memes, has translated into a sense of community. The account, which has 67,300 followers at the time of writing, is helmed by Toronto-based writer and artist Kristel Jax. Never trite and always real, posts live up to their account’s name, capturing the complexity of the human experience by juxtaposing it against the absurd perfection of Barbie herself. Images of the iconic doll in various locations, poses, outfits, and (sometimes silly) scenarios are accompanied by acerbic, at times nihilistic text engaging in the complex work of trauma recovery and daily living. On the Instagram account Barbie is both the main character and a conduit for therapy. Welcome to Favorite Follow, a series highlighting NYLON's favorite creators and the stories behind some of their most memorable content. ![]()
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