M.A.C. and Barbie Advertisement

Every year or so M.A.C Cosmetics teams up with an iconic figure in pop culture. This ad was launched January 26, 2007 and the line included everything from lipsticks, foundations, eye shadows, and blushes all created based off of M.A.C's interpretation of Mattel’s Barbie.

Throughout history, Barbie has played many different roles in her work, love, and domestic life. She's been portrayed as a physically and intellectually perfect woman. A woman who can do it all from Pilot Barbie to Fire Fighter Barbie, and who can have it all; the pink corvette and the matching dream house. Barbie is a woman who one would think to be the ideal role model for girls, young and old, considering the fact that she's smart and independent. But Barbie has also been seen as a rebellious figure. She was created in 1959, a time where women were only viewed as homemakers not career women. And over the years there's been great controversy over Barbie's perfect appearance and unrealistic body image. Due to the many achievements and controversy surrounding her, Barbie’s considered a role model and an indirect rebel too most women. Barbie is what society believes every woman wants be: extraordinarily beautiful, thin, intelligent, independent, and rich in material items. M.A.C. is a brand similar to what Barbie is in the sense that M.A.C. is a classy high quality cosmetic line, but known for its vibrancy and bright colors M.A.C. is also a line with an edge.

 

This advertisement uses all three forms of rhetoric. Ethos because Barbie is a credible figure within our society for what is and what is not beautiful, (despite the fact that she's fictional). Since Barbie is a toy that a lot of women played with as girls, she can bring out an emotional/sensitive side within many people. Barbie brings people back to a happy and innocent time in their lives, which was childhood. Therefore, this advertisement is a form of Pathos too. And finally, logos is used as a form as well because everyone knows Barbie is smart and beautiful. She's done almost anything one could imagine so obviously Barbie knows which cosmetics are best. The statement "Barbie Loves M.A.C." basically means, Barbie uses M.A.C. and she loves it because she always looks amazing. And if you want to look like Barbie, you need to use M.A.C. too.  Logos ties into the underlying message which is: you, the consumer, should love M.A.C too because Barbie knows best when it comes to beauty. The corporations behind Barbie (Mattel) and M.A.C. (Este Lauder) are the senders of this message. They're huge companies looking to make sales. They don't care about what type of psychological message they're sending to women with the phrase “Barbie Love’s M.A.C.”, or that a doll rather than a real woman is their spokes model. They're telling woman to strive for an impossible standard of beauty. The receivers are mostly young girls or older women trying to stay young. Because M.A.C. always sells such bright colors they tend to get a lot of younger consumers who are more daring and into the latest trends. On the other end of the spectrum of consumers, there are older women who want to keep up with the young. The model is of course young, Caucasian, and blonde. She’s made up to look like a doll, another form a visual rhetoric. Everything about this ad just shows how extremely shallow our society is when it comes to beauty. The only way to truly  be acceptable in today’s world, is to make yourself look unreal, like a Barbie doll.