Barbie's Brilliant Fashion Internship
In what was probably designed to be a cute stunt designed to boost interest in SHOWstudio.com, a small plastic doll has managed to demoralize thousands of would be fashionistas by beating them out for an internship placement with elite photographer Nick Knight and the SHOWstudio.com team. This is why I always say one should be wary of jobs that could equally be done with a non sentient lump of plastic as a human being. It's always somehow dehumanizing to work for years learning your trade only to eventually be passed over for a children's toy.
Reports from Vogue state that “Barbie will be blogging live video updates documenting her internship with photographer Nick Knight and the SHOWstudio.com team. From this Sunday, she will offer a behind-the-scenes account of her experience working at SHOWstudio in the run up to London Fashion Week.
Barbie will document her 20 day placement as she requests tickets for London Fashion Week, visits some of SHOWstudio.com's favorite London labels, assists Nick Knight on a fashion shoot and helps out at the opening of new exhibition In Wolves Clothing: Re-Imagining the Doll for Fashion's Night Out.'"
My favorite part of that report was the part where they pretended that the plastic doll would actually be doing some real life work. Of course, behind the scenes, some lowly fashion scrub will probably be tasked with the challenge of blogging on behalf of Barbie, in an event rather reminiscent of the way China swapped out that cute kid for the one that could actually sing in the opening events of the Olympic Games.
What will really be happening of course is that the Barbie doll in question will have a camera hidden in her necklace (so she's sort of a fashion spy Barbie,) and she'll also have a video screen in her back (a really small one of use only to other Barbie dolls.) The feeds from her necklace camera will be uploaded to the Internet, where we'll all be able to enjoy being condescended to as if we were dolls.
Thank god for the tenuous tie in with the 'Re-imagining the Doll' show that makes an otherwise silly plan actually quite clever. Of course, for actual humans wanting placements as fashion interns, this will be a bit of a teeth grinding moment – until they realize that this probably means big hair and video implants are so in right now. Expect to see a bunch of skinny 20 somethings with cameras implanted in their skulls next season.