"The Hacked Barbie". A Workshop Series to (De) Construct Contemporary Bodies and Social Pressure

The Hacked Barbie is a workshop series and an experimental practice-based dissemination activity of the research project Excel-The Pursuit of Excellence. During the workshop meetings, online and offline, participants were invited to reproduce their body on a doll to progressively unfold the social pressure of excellence experienced in the everyday life. Being perfect through the skin, the hairs and all the body, is a responsibility of post-modern individuals, who interiorize social expectations as personal desires, committing in a life-long process of intervention and monitor of how we look like in front of mirrors. The present paper and video illustrate the Excel team efforts to disseminate process of awareness about meanings of body interventions, social expectations and structural inequities featuring the hegemonic models of perfections.