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A Brooklyn company is bidding to create a Hillary Clinton action figure that makes the politician a ‘symbol of intelligence, strength, power and tenacity’

Wearing a light blue pantsuit, pearls and sensible mules, a miniature Hillary Clinton has hinged arms and a smiling face atop a swivel-ready neck. The “ready-for-action figure” is “not a doll”, according to its creators Jason Feinberg and Alyssa Zeller Feinberg, the husband and wife behind product design studio FCTRY.

“I see Hillary herself as an anti-Barbie,” Feinberg said. “Barbie has become pretty much universally recognised as a symbol of a feminine ideal based purely on unattainable physical beauty. Hillary on the other hand, is a symbol of intelligence, strength, power and tenacity.”

In 2008 the studio, based in (where else) Brooklyn, made an Obama action figure that “put them on the map”. They had hoped to make a Hillary Clinton cabbage patch doll, Feinberg said. “But during the primaries, I realized Obama was going to be a big thing with my generation.” The Obama action figure was a huge success, allowing Zeller Feinberg to quit her job and become FCTRY’s full-time creative director.

Now, with Hillary possibly running for president again, the design studio team hopes to do their part to support a Clinton 2016 campaign.

“We made this for the Hillary supporters. It’s inspired by the old Star Wars action figures, which is to say, it’s something you buy and keep around because you identify with the character it represents.” So far, the project has received $9,761 –more than half of their $15,000 goal – from 279 backers.

Feinberg said he saw the doll as sharing many of Hillary’s possible campaign goals. “If she’s going to win this time around, she’s going to have to run a 21st-century campaign and that includes better branding, messaging and social media. We designed the action figure to be a preview of what that campaign could or should look like. It’s young, it’s humorous and it’s playful. We’ve literally packaged Hillary for the 18-35 demographic.”

So why the emphasis on the Hillary action figure as the opposite of other, supposedly less feminist dolls out there? Surely the Obama doll wasn’t hailed as the “anti-GI Joe”. Does a political doll need to make a comment on whether or not contemporary dolls are too sexy, or is the anti-Barbie mentality just an extension of the competitive roles women are often forced into in the real world? The obsessive search for the right kind of doll distracts from the systemic real-life oppressions that keep the world a toxic place for little girls to grow up in. Would a fairy princess fantasy life be so harmful to their future careers if girls could reasonably expect to feel welcome in the computer sciences? Who cares how much makeup your doll is wearing if your mother knows she won’t get shamed for looking “tired” when makeup free, or “slutty” with too much on? The Hillary action figure isn’t really a kids’ toy, but a propaganda tool, a way for adults of voting age to align themselves in a kitschy way with the idea of Hillary Clinton. Moreover, what child of either gender would choose to play with a buttoned-up politician over a fairy princess or pop star?

Ultimately, this project is more about election politics than gender politics. But coverage of the action figure and even FCTRY’s own Kickstarter video has tended to emphasise a feminist or anti-Barbie element. The story seems to be less Republican v Democrat and more woman v woman. “I think the Hillary Clinton action figure and Barbie can co-exist,” Feinberg said. “But come playtime, you know who’s going to be in charge.”

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