This SNL “President Barbie” skit uses satire to highlight how young girls are pressured to conform to societal expectations of what they should be interested in. The skits start with a typical toy commercial, where the girls are playing together on the floor. However, the toys are not what the toy companies want girls to be playing with. Instead, they are playing with toys like Legos.
The skit then switches to what Mattel, the toy company, wants girls to see: President Barbie, who is equipped with sunglasses and even a phone with Snapchat. But the girls don’t care for Barbie, and Mattel adds comments saying that they’re supposed to like it because Barbie is just like them. Even the lady in the voiceover adds a sarcastic comment about the sexist but common expectation for women to smile more.
This skit uses various satirical techniques, including sarcasm, understatement, and situational irony to highlight how unnecessary gender norms and roles for women and girls are. The situational irony of how the Mattel company constantly pushes gendered toys on kids makes it clear that SNL is showing that young girls want to explore a variety of things and not be confined to specific gender norms. The toy companies and people with power try to empower girls but often fail because they push what they want people to hear too hard. They lack the understanding of the younger populations. Nowadays, young kids want to try out a lot of different things and not conform to specific gender norms because they can be whatever they want to be.
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