The Brief: TikTok's #BarbieGirlChallenge defies unrealistic beauty standards as creators transition from a full glam look, through a post-op look, to au naturale.
DEEP DIVE
TikTok’s Barbie Girl Challenge is sending a message about unrealistic beauty standards. The trend is marked by creators attempting to glow up into a life-sized Barbie doll by putting on a ton of makeup. Creators then draw lines and arrows on their face, adding gauze and fake blood to suggest that they’d have to undergo surgery to truly reach Barbie’s point of perfection. These videos typically finish with a transition to a subtle face beat.
The trend is performed to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” remixed into Ava Max’s “Not Your Barbie Girl.” The trend began growing in popularity in early June 2020. Many of these videos can be found under the associated hashtags #BarbieGirlChallenge which has over 66 million views, at the time of publication.
The remixed audio, which is linked to over 107,000 videos, was included in @Jharnabhagwani’s June 1 video. It received over 12.3 million likes and 69.1 million views.
@jharnabhagwani Barbie Girl 💅🏼✨
Popular creator @Itsjustaba took on the trend, transitioning from monochromatic makeup to a natural makeup look, all the while advocating for #BlackLivesMatter. Her video received over 429,000 likes and 2 million views.
@itsjustaba barbie finds herself. #blacklivesmatter #fyp #abasangels
Many videos are performed by makeup enthusiasts and beauty vloggers, while placing emphasis on empowering themselves and others with their final, subtle makeup look.
@nickigraham11 B A R B I E 💋 collab/ @madisonpetro ib @jharnabhagwani #fyp #mua #art #viral
Other “Barbie Girl” videos:
@glambyflo #barbiegirlchallenge inspired by @jharnabhagwani check out my Instagram for more☺️ #fyp#foryoupage#lipsync#barbie#foryou#tiktoktutorial
@nrmfathi iM a B4rbi3 gUrl #fyp #barbichallenge ib @jharnabhagwani
@mayaschoonover This took me 5hrs & I’m still not happy with it 🥴 TikTokBrushes #WorkoutPlan #fyp #foryou #xyzbca #makeup #barbie_girl