The rise of the word’s popularity throughout ‘23 could, for the most part, be credited to singer-songwriter and cultural juggernaut Taylor Swift and her Eras Tour, which she refers to as a journey throughout the various “eras” of her career. Spanning five continents and nearly a full year, the 151-show concert tour can itself be considered a separate cultural juggernaut  partly responsible for unanticipated seismic activity in Seattle, an international  wake-up call regarding large-scale event mismanagement in Brazil, and post-pandemic economy refreshment to boot.

Contrary to popular misconception, however, it isn’t Swift who ushered the concept of “eras” towards a more general vernacular, but rather online “stan” spaces on X and Reddit that refer to distinct album cycles, sonic directions, or even an artist’s stylistic choices in terms of their bodies of work or fashion sense.

Whether this “eras” zeitgeist sprang from a steady crossover of Swift-adjacent terminology and lore from these spaces, or arose in concurrence with it, the upshot’s been a sharp increase of fan-made, or at least unofficial everything Swift: Etsy merchandise (seemingly undeterred by an infamous-turned-memeable 2015 crackdown by Swift and her legal team), cocktails, and even entire AirBnBs — but more on those in a bit.

“Consumption-wise, we are in an era where niches and communities are very important,” Ana Clara Ribeiro, a Brazilian intellectual property (IP) attorney, researcher and independent songwriter, tells Hollywood.com, “so, brands may want to tap into that.”

A lot of Ribeiro’s research and writing explores the intersection between what could be perceived as fandom’s tilt toward creativity-for-profit, and the conversations surrounding artists’ intellectual property–not just in Western or more-U.S.-centric musical spaces, but also Latin and Korean music, both of which are experiencing their own renaissance in the United States and elsewhere. Her work as an attorney, Ribiero says, has taught her that being a fan of a particular artist or celebrity isn’t the carte blanche to infringe on their IP that many of them might believe it is, but also that an artist coming after groups of fans with legal action poses a different set of professional risks–and is therefore less common than one might think.

“It’s always complicated when a company has to take action against a fan, because after all this is the person that you want to reach,” she says. “You want to have them on your side, and some industries are so fan-oriented that the cost of losing a fan over an IP infringement claim might not just be worth it.”

Ribeiro explains that there are notable outliers to this, particularly video game development giant Nintendo. The company is notorious in gamer circles for their near-zero tolerance for fanmade projects that utilize their IP, along with any online streams of such projects.

“I think each case is unique,” she says, having added that she isn’t much of a gamer herself. “Nintendo, and how they deal with commercial properties, are very different from how other companies deal with them, especially nowadays when fandom is such a precious asset, and people invest so much in building fan experiences and in attracting and nurturing fanbases.”

To put it lightly, fan “experiences” are the backbone of careers built by the likes of Swift, Korean pop sensations such as  BTS (along with Korean music’s next generation of acts), and a growing number of musicians and entertainers who — with mixed results — attempt to squeeze every ounce of potential from the foundations of fandom subcultures. Entire news cycles are now built on aggregating content about pop culture’s biggest names, with Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the U.S., recently hiring and onboarding its inaugural full-time Taylor Swift and Beyoncé reporters. The move seemingly takes a page out of sports journalism, where it’s common for beat reporters to cover specific major-league teams or individual athletes full-time.

Chicago-based realtor Michelle Basiorka describes herself as someone who’s big on fan “experiences”. As a result, she created The Swiftie Shangri-La, a Taylor Swift-inspired AirBnB located in Nashville, Tennessee.

“This is before I even knew she was doing an Eras Tour,” Basiorka tells Hollywood.com. Even before acquiring the property, she says, “I wanted to do a bedroom in the style of the bedroom in the “Lover” music video, which we have now come to find actually represents her original eras. And I knew that for the outdoor space, I wanted to pay homage to the “You Need to Calm Down” music video.”

Basiorka anticipated The Swiftie Shangri-La would gain some traction online after it was made available for guests in 2023, but the internet virality and media attention it drew far exceeded her expectations. The property and its specific location, according to her, is something that just makes sense.

“[Taylor Swift] goes hand in hand with Nashville, in my eyes, just as much as Dollywood,” she says, “I think what’s unique about Taylor … is that there’s so much lore involved in her music videos and from her music.”

That, Basiorka feels, is something no other artist has managed to as successfully. “It’s the reason we were able to make an AirBnB to the extent at which its done.”

As far the question of its legality, Basiorka believes she might be safe, considering her project is a labor of love and not directly music-related.

“{Taylor} is obviously not in the business of hospitality,” she explains, “It’s done in a way where it’s tasteful, and there’s a lot of love and a true Swiftie behind it. It’s apparent that it’s fanmade and we’re not trying to pass this off as an official Taylor project. I think if she saw it for herself, you know, she’d appreciate it.”

Dalia Abdelwahab is a music, entertainment and culture journalist based in the NYC Metropolitan Area. Her reporting focuses on identifying the intersections between how entertainment is produced and perceived in all its forms, and the state of our society and culture at every given moment. She also has experience with covering national news and foreign affairs.

TikTok’s primary user demographic skews heavily towards Generations Z and Alpha, but the app, and the #Fashion tag by proxy, have recently experienced a boom (pun somewhat intended) of influencers who belong to the Generation X and Baby Boomer cohorts. Those individuals are often affectionately referred to by the portmanteau granfluencers, a play on combining the words “grandparent” and “influencer”.

The grandmother of Chicago-based content creator Julia does not necessarily fit the bill of a “granfluencer” — for one, she keeps a very low profile and opts not to show her face in any of the videos Julia features her in. She still, however, has managed to become a cornerstone of Julia’s account and amass quite a fascinated fanbase, and it’s all thanks to the unconventional way she’s fulfilled what was once perceived as a long-lost dream: Having her fashion sketches and designs come to life nearly eight decades after she dropped out of fashion school.

Julia, who does not give out her last name publicly on the advice of law enforcement, says it all started with a situation that has ironically become a catalyst behind so many social media juggernauts’ careers: COVID-19 lockdowns.

“[While in lockdown], my grandmother was going through her house, because what else is there to do?” Julia tells Hollywood.com in an exclusive interview. “And she uncovered some of her sketches from when she was in fashion school.”

Before that, Julia had only heard about her grandmother’s fashion school endeavors in passing, and had never really been exposed to her grandmother’s artistry outside of an occasional dining nook doodle. This made the unveiling of grandma’s sketches, along with a plot she’d hatched for them, quite the mind-blowing surprise for Julia.

“She was kind of gloating about that,” Julia recalls, “Because she is up there in years, she was like ‘when I pass on, I would love for these to be displayed at my funeral or sent out to magazines so that people know that I did this, that this was something in my life that was really important to me at that time’.”

Julia did not know how to contact or reach out to magazines, but there was something she proved very good at: Making a social media post despite having no experience in content creation aside from maintaining a private, personal Instagram account. She got to work that same night (“[because] why would we wait until her funeral for her to get recognition for this?”), posting a simple TikTok slideshow of some of her grandmother’s sketches, along with a blurb of her grandmother’s backstory as a woman who went to fashion school in the 1940s and ended up dropping out to care for some older members of her family that had developed health complications–and also to start a family of her own, as women were highly dissuaded from pursuing those sorts of career paths at the time.

The next day she woke up to over three million views of the slideshow accompanied by a myriad of comments pleading for a real-life recreation of the sketches. Once again, Julia did not have any fashion design or sewing experience. But once again, she knew how to use Google and YouTube, and she had a background in upcycling and thrifting, the latter  a skill she says she naturally developed out of financial necessity rather than fashion-forward vanity. Now, almost two years into her quest to honor her grandmother’s old dream, Julia is capable each month of bringing approximately two of grandma’s sketches to life, which she sews based on her own body measurements and showcases on TikTok by wearing the outfits herself, often accompanied by her grandmother’s commentary and critiques.

“She’s just being a proud grandma at that moment,” Julia explains. “She is also well aware of my skill level. … It would be different if she saw these kinds of designs on a professional runway, and I’m sure she would have a different reaction. She’s critiquing me at the skill level she knows I’m at.”

Pride appears to be a sentiment that is also shared by Julia’s (and her grandmother’s) audience base, considering that she still receives pleas in the form of comments and direct messages to make some of her grandmother’s designs available for purchase on a larger scale as a ready-to-wear collection — pleas in the process of partially materializing by way of an upcoming collaboration with Jillian Von Beyer of the sustainable swimwear line JVBSwim.

“Grandma [already] had a few different swimwear designs, but she and I wanted to create some new designs for this collection,” Julia says. “So, there’s one that is inspired by a ‘grandma design’ that’s more 1940s, 1950s-inspired. There will also be a bikini that I designed that’s more 1980s, and then there will be a wrap skirt that is inspired by my background in ballet and some of the creations I’ve made in the past.”

Aside from the line incorporating a mix of her own and her grandmother’s designs, part of Julia’s excitement for the collaboration springs from the prospect of a “grandma design” that people finally would be able to buy and wear. However, that same prospect might be a lot trickier to secure for other “grandma designs”, particularly her couture designs.

“I’m someone who doesn’t have a lot of money to just throw at a company,” Julia says. “I’m a content creator, but not necessarily someone who’s personally rolling in dough in my private life. So in order to get a clothing company off the ground, I would have to cut a lot of corners in terms of the quality of the items to [put] it out in a certain size range. And I just don’t want to do that. Of course one day I would love to be able to bring more ‘grandma designs’ to fruition, but right now with my budget constraints, I don’t want to cut corners just to push a product to market.”

Another thing Julia expresses concerns about is the potential for contributing to the fashion industry’s increasing carbon footprint, adding that the reason she agreed to the JVBSwim collaboration has to do with the brand’s claims that it ethically makes its products with deadstock fabric. In fact, she maintains that she typically attempts to be mindful of promoting the idea of sustainability in fashion — a medium she says is notorious for encouraging overconsumption– in more ways than one, including repurposing the fabric she uses to bring her grandmother’s sketches to life.

“One, it’s therapeutic,” she says. “By the time I’m done, I don’t even want to look at them. Yeah, I come down the stairs [in my videos] smiling, but inside, I’m like, ‘Oh, God, I can’t wait to get this off’. There is a therapeutic element of destroying your work and being able to start again, but it mostly is so that I can repurpose the fabric. I will oftentimes also take thrifted pieces that I find, deconstruct them by ripping their seams, and make them into something else. Then I’ll take them apart again, kind of like LEGO bricks.”

Those tuned into Julia’s platform to watch her bring these sketches — along with reused fabric, deadstock fabric, and upcycled thrifted attire – haven’t necessarily seen her grandmother beyond her occasional video appearances. During all she is strategically positioned with her back facing the camera and maintaining a low profile. This has prompted curious (albeit well-intentioned) entreaties for grandma to appear on-camera in her own designs, something Julia knows really amounts to her audience yearning for a happily-ever-after for her grandmother. But she won’t be participating in a fairytale ending of that sort.

“We have to remember that she has her own emotional and physical boundaries,” Julia says. “If you spend a lot of time around people in older generations, they sometimes can have boundaries or limitations that might not make sense to younger people, and we have to respect and be okay with that. She’s the designer. She wants her focus to be on the work. When you go to a runway show, the designer might peek out at the end kind of sheepishly and wave at the audience or something, but they usually aren’t front and center.”

If anything, according to Julia, grandma is already living her fairytale ending, having people show love for her designs on several platforms, including New York Fashion Week — a full-circle moment for a woman who never thought she’d see her designs walked down an actual fashion runway (although she had to tune in via livestream due to her age and health issues).

“That’s how grandma wants to be,” Julia says. “She wants the focus to be on her sketches. She wants the focus to be on her work. She doesn’t want it to be on her as a personality. Also, she’s up there in years, and physically getting in and out of these designs would not be enjoyable for her whatsoever … She’s very happy being the designer and not being the model.”

Julia and grandma both seem quite content with keeping a low profile, to the degree that Julia asked Hollywood.com to refer to grandma in this piece as just that — “grandma”.

“We call her grandma, and everyone online just calls her grandma,” Julia says, beaming. “Even when she calls up Papa John’s for pizza, she’ll be like, ‘Hi, it’s grandma’, and they’ll be like, ‘Okay!’”

Dalia Abdelwahab is a music, entertainment and culture journalist based in the NYC Metropolitan Area. Her reporting focuses on identifying the intersections between how entertainment is produced and perceived in all its forms, and the state of our society and culture at every given moment. She also has experience with covering national news and foreign affairs.

Though rooted in snotty anarchy, the concept of the sell-out permeates modern art in all of its many definitions. Though many will decry a metal band taking a softer approach in a new album or signing to an international label as posers, in the long run it seems to benefit them … mostly because these cries have calmed in the modern age. You can be upset that the band you grew up with as they spat out deathcore slams has morphed into a radio-friendly arena rock act, but are you really more inclined to call them out on social media for selling out than the basement-dwelling older brother who seethed with rage when The Damned showed up on Top of the Pops?

An interesting change has struck fan culture over the years, and while these accusations of kissing the feet of corporate drones have opened themselves across culture decades after their most vitriolic appearances, these same rules seemingly don’t apply to the TikTokers, beauty professionals and video essayists. So what exactly has changed? It’s not like we miss them, but where did the guardians of the moral high-ground go?

It seems the slow fade into silence of sell-out cries stems from vast changes in the entertainment industry overall. Back in the day, bands would pin their dreams on the one record deal that would take them out of their hometown and basement clubs …  the hope that a big-time A&R scout, impressed by talents, would whisk them off into the rarefied rockstar Olympus where they could shred amid the fist-pumping exaltation of their fans. But the current system couldn’t be further from this old paradigm. As social media has taken off, it’s become more and more likely an algorithm will pick up an artist’s popularity and do the whisking before scouts and managers ever get a crack at it. And if they reach a point where they’re amassing millions of frequent views and plenty of online love, they’re guaranteed to sell plenty of whatever it is a corporate opportunist wants them to sell.

But the music industry is only part large and varied online entertainment landscape, and what’s true of it applies equally to that wider world.

Take for instance Brittany Broski, the accidental meme-turned-Instagram star who’s dipped her toes into YouTube production, presenting and podcasting her online hot takes with such punishingly consistent effectiveness, and relatable confessions of horniness, that fans will lap up anything she puts in front of them. She’s mastered the art of establishing an online persona, and her fans don’t seem to mind even when that persona is interrupted by ad reads on her Broski Report podcast.

The key to all this is the shifting digital landscape and changes in the very way creators are paid for their work. They don’t necessarily sell anything anymore, offering their hot takes and entertainment to fans free on YouTube and elsewhere, their presence on the platform ultimately a given whether or not they’re getting pay-per-click ad revenues. Advertisers have shown they’ll pull the plug at the drop of a hat when a popular YouTuber shouts racist slurs in gamer rage or a weird narcissist with deep pockets buys Twitter without knowing what to do with it. The next best thing for creators, then, is to turn to sponsorships–thevery same thing that would turn up the noses of the Mohawk-sporting two-stepper of the 80s–and fans know this. Many fans of online creators have heard horror stories about “Making it” online, but when they see someone like Broski reflecting back their own thoughts and opinions, they’ll allow them to do what they need to do (within limits, naturally) to keep creating. For them it’s an acceptable tradeoff.  

For a lot of us it’s become second nature to turn off ad-blockers when viewing our favorite creator’s work. Turning back to music, while album sales and iTunes downloads are a thing of the past for all but collectors, they’re more likely to buy merch at live shows or online in order to allow them to keep doing what they’re doing for free. Many fans experienced the adpocalypse on YouTube after PewDiePie fired out racial slurs on a livestream,  subsequently watching their favorite creators confess that YouTube became less financially viable as a result. Sponsorships are the only consistent income some creators get, so it makes more sense to be proud when a creator gets an ad deal with a brand like Tinder than to trash them for it. After all, you’re not paying them for the privilege of their work, and you have the brands they’re promoting to thank for it.

It’s been a long time since an artist could survive on actual sales. Unless you’re willing to buy some t-shirts or prints from them online, you’re left without a rational soapbox on which to rant about creators using advertisers in their content. Some fans will continue to choose the purist’s hill to die on, but the new digital landscape has folded society to a point where we have no reason to complain about rockstars appearing in ads — not only because the “rockstar” moniker less valuable by the day, but because the young people complaining don’t actually watch linear TV anymore. We have more access than ever to speakers, artists and critics that echo our thoughts and feelings almost identically. As a result, we have to suffer the fact that advertising’s also becoming more specific in its targeting, appearing in the podcasts and videos we fill every moment with.

For advertisers and creators alike, the pushback has diminished, the volume of the sell-out cries fallen off to odd grumbles and groans. Grudgingly or otherwise, we recognize that most creators have no other option but to show their audience the latest update for World of Tanks or the many benefits of a Hello Fresh subscription. If our choices are that, or no Broski Report, we’ll gladly take the former.

Joseph Kime is a journalist, author and podcaster from Devon, UK. He is the Senior Trending News Writer for gaming site GGRecon, writer of the self-published essay collection Building A Universe, and co-creator of The Big Screen Book Club podcast. After graduating from Plymouth’s MarJon University with a degree in Journalism, he’s written for the likes of The Digital Fix, Zavvi and FANDOM. He’s Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s biggest fan, and will talk your ear off about the significance of Kiki’s Delivery Service.

It didn’t t take long for singer Britney Spears’ much-anticipated 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, to top the New York Times’ coveted Bestseller List. In fact, the book surpassed the 1.1 million sales threshold needed to reach that spot within a week of its official October release–a feat notably achieved without traditional press tours or promotion outside a handful of social media posts and the publisher teasing out some exclusive excerpts to People magazine (Spears wrongly claimed at one point that her book was the highest-selling celebrity memoir “in history,” despite its coming in second to Prince Harry’s Spare as 2023’s bestselling celebrity tell-all).

Spears’ ghostwriter-assisted tome had been on many readers’ to-read lists since her deal was inked in February 2022, and with good reason: it was, in a way, a reclamation of her life and career narrative following a prolonged, highly-publicized and, some would say,  tedious legal battle to terminate a 13 year-long conservatorship imposed by her father, Jamie Spears. The court battle coincided with a number of documentaries about the legal process’ impact on Spears’ life, persona, and public image, even prompting a fan-initiated #FreeBritney movement at its most visible.

Spears would ultimately prevail in a November 2021 decision by an LA superior court judge.

With the book’s momentum as a cultural juggernaut came a wave of predictable reactions on social media, ranging from lighthearted jabs at some of those named-and-shamed in its pages to full-on analyses of some its juicier revelations.

Julie Theis, an influencer with a master’s degree in psychology, isn’t one of those Spears memoir analysts (despite having posted about the singer). But her splashy camera-friendliness aside, part of what’s gained her a dedicated following on Instagram and TikTok is content that uses pop culture figures like the Kardashian-Jenner clan to illustrate psychological concepts that have made their way into laypeople’s consciousness and vocabulary, including phrases like narcissistic tendencies and gaslighting. According to Theis, psychoanalyzing other people — celebrities included –- can be a gateway to understanding oneself.

“I think we … psychoanalyze outside of ourselves as a way to understand ourselves because that gives us a sense of control,” Theis tells Hollywood.com. “I’ve definitely gotten comment[s] … and hate back that to psychoanalyze is not the right thing to do, because you don’t actually know these people’s lives. For me, though, in grad school, {we’re} all given … one piece of paper and it has different personality traits [on it], different scenarios, and so we’re taught to pick up on patterns.”

Although she runs a life coaching practice alongside social media, Theis isn’t a licensed therapist. Fellow psycho-educational content creator Amanda E. White is, however. Specifically she’s a licensed professional counselor (LPC) based in Pennsylvania.

“I have a lot of clients who are Taylor Swift fans and they were talking to me in session about the songs that they related to and the lyrics that they love,” White tells Hollywood.com. “And that became just like really helpful in sessions as we were talking about it. And I started noticing different themes … [within her lyrics].”

These sessions inspired White to create a TikTok series she calls “Taylor Swift Therapy”, in which she delves into the emotions or memories Swift’s songs can evoke in listeners. And these feelings aren’t necessarily exclusive to her followers. BuzzFeed reports, for instance, that Bigger Than the Whole Sky, a track off the 3AM Edition of Swift’s 2022 album Midnights, has resonated with many women who have experienced miscarriages and/or pregnancy loss–and later decided to open up about their feelings on internet message boards.

White emphasizes, “With my videos, I try to really focus on general themes. I don’t psychoanalyze Swift herself or anything, because I don’t know her. I’m not her therapist, and I can’t diagnose her or anything like that. My videos are a lot more focused on … why someone may connect with certain songs. So, I’m really focusing much more on the music and why I think a certain person may relate to her music. That’s definitely distinct from other times where people will psychoanalyze celebrities or diagnose them or things like that.”

The American Psychological Association’s standards and guidelines are yet to include any explicit clauses on social media’s use of therapeutic practices, especially when it comes to  psychoeducation on public platforms. Because of this, professionals who produce psychology-adjacent content for Instagram and TikTok, have established their own set of unofficial boundaries and standards that they attempt to uphold. White understands the appeal of psychoanalyzing celebrities or public figures, but remains cautious for what she says are ethical reasons – as well as to avoid being perceived as exploiting others’ pain or trauma to create content.

“I think that Britney Spears, like Taylor Swift, a lot of people feel like they grew up with her,” she says. “I think they feel really connected to her. And I think that people try … it’s human nature to want to understand why someone is the way they are.”

White’s Swift-success has led her to expand her TikTok pop culture-adjacent psycho-education by adding yet another, nearly identical series to her page — albeit focused on the pop starlet often seen to be the carrier of Taylor Swift’s torch (in the teenage heartbreak department), or maybe Avril Lavigne’s torch (in the teenage angst department): Olivia Rodrigo. Julie Theis has also widened her lens to include videos and other tidbits not necessarily tied to pop culture. But she’s proud of  her original concept.

“I’ve gone viral on many celebrities, many different series,” she explains. “There have been people who have thanked me for, number one, seeing the parts of them that they need to change … people who have said they’ve left an abusive relationship because it can be easier to see behaviors in another person if you’re in denial about your own. On the other side, though, I’ve gotten [feedback] like ‘why do you care? You’re so obsessed with celebrities. You don’t know these people, how could you diagnose their life?’ But my content is not meant to be judgmental. If I say someone has this insecurity, an insecurity doesn’t have to be bad — we all have them.”

Dalia Abdelwahab is a music, entertainment and culture journalist based in the NYC Metropolitan Area. Her reporting focuses on identifying the intersections between how entertainment is produced and perceived in all its forms, and the state of our society and culture at every given moment. She also has experience with covering national news and foreign affairs.

This was never necessarily unpredictable, as 2023 was also the year the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency—beginning a de facto post-pandemic era that’s put consumers on the lookout for experiences to which they can devote some lockdown-induced pent-up energy. A notable common denominator among the Swift, Beyoncé, and Barbie aficionados of the world has been paying tribute to the aforementioned concerts and movie by way of outfits inspired by their headliners’ legacies.

Mona Wazir, a TikTok and Instagram content creator whose posts revolve around wellness and beauty, is among the numerous people to join in this phenomenon—with a twist. She decided to use the Barbie-inspired fashion trend (affectionately dubbed “Barbiecore” by social media users) to educate people about the cultural attire common in her family’s hometowns of Harar and Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.

Wazir has showcased herself in a TikTok video that’s set to the sounds of various Barbies and a comically boisterous (off-camera) Ken from Barbie greeting each other. In the now-viral clip, Wazir appears in the articles of clothing women often wear in both Harar and Dire Daw, styling them how she envisions an Ethiopian Barbie might–using, for example, mal fota (a scarf typically worn over the head or draped over the shoulders) and gey ganafi (traditional pants).

“The colors that I chose were lighter colors–just kind of lighter, girly, feminine colors–to go with the whole Barbie [theme],” she explains to Hollywood.com, adding that part of the reason she opted to post a cultural take on Barbiecore also had to do with representation.

“When you look at Barbie, {she} is basically predominantly just white, skinny, blonde … and that’s not something that I can relate to in any way,” Wazir says, “So I just kind of wanted it to be relatable and fun, and to also showcase my traditions from back home.”

Mattel’s Barbie doll and toy franchise–the titular inspiration behind the Margot Robbie-starring film – prides itself on being a champion of much-needed representation in the world of fashion across the board, especially within its Fashionistas line, which features Barbies of multiple skin complexions, hairstyles, hair textures, and body types. But Hope Simpara, an associate professor of practice of fashion industry’s science and technology at The University of Arizona, clarifies that it hasn’t always been this way despite Mattel’s current efforts.

“Barbie was created to sort of fit an ideal that doesn’t exist in normal society, even with her measurements,” Simpara tells Hollywood.com.

Simpara, an avid fan of the toy line since her childhood, adds that even Mattel’s early efforts at making its Barbie line more inclusive and appealing for Black people, Indigenous people and other People of Color (BIPOC) still somewhat missed the mark.

“Christie [the first Black doll in the Barbie line] was introduced in the late 1960’s, and I think that was Mattel’s first attempt to try to answer to more inclusive practices and inclusive play,” Simpara explains, “But, still, Christie was not Barbie. She was, you know, a friend of Barbie.”

“Hi Barbie! Hi Ken!” Internet beauty content creator and wellness expert Mona Wazir in all her Barbiecore glory.

That aside, she maintains the Barbie franchise has made many strides in terms of inclusivity, adding that piquing the general public’s interest in high fashion wasn’t necessarily a direct result of the theatrical tie-in, but rather a ripple effect the doll franchise has been generating for a long time.

“When they designed [Barbie’s various outfits], they were looking at high fashion. It was a good way to get people to think about fashion, design, and dressing the body – especially children as they start to develop their own style and aesthetic,” Simpara says, citing her introduction to the work of Oscar de la Renta through a blue Barbie dress that was part of a collaboration between the Oscar de la Renta label and the Barbie franchise.

“When you look at Barbie, {she} is basically predominantly just white, skinny, blonde … and that’s not something that I can relate to in any way.”

The “Barbiecore” fashion trend is starting to wind down as Barbie itself has made its way to streaming platforms, and as the weather has started to shift gears into the much less bubblegum-pink friendly fall. But given the mostly positive response her Barbie-inspired content received, Wazir says she wants to continue sharing different aspects of her Harari Ethiopian culture with more fashion-centric content in the future.

About the Author:

Dalia Abdelwahab is a music, entertainment and culture journalist based in the NYC Metropolitan Area. Her reporting focuses on identifying the intersections between how entertainment is produced and perceived in all its forms, and the state of our society and culture at every given moment. She also has experience with covering national news and foreign affairs.