Commuter Barbie Is All Of Us
“The career girl who’s running the world and running late”
We love a good spoof. Particularly, one that we can relate to so intimately it feels like a personalized attack. Introducing: Commuter Barbie.
Who is she? A subway-riding, Starbucks-toting, train-reading millennial just trying to navigate the big city. But, really, she’s every New Yorker.
The parody was created by comedians, Carina Hsieh and Claudia Arisso, who told Gothamist that the idea came to them during a late-night trip to The Strand, a popular bookstore located in NYC. Seeing an image of the branded tote bag “set off a PTSD flashback to every canvas-lined rush hour commute we ever had. If there are 18 miles of books at The Strand, there must be double that mileage in stockroom totes," Hsieh told the site, "and every single one of them will end up being flaunted on the train."
The tote is just one of Commuter Barbie’s many accessories. Others include a yoga mat, a grande macchiato with her name spelled wrong, Urbanears headphones to tune out the creeps (and to listen to the latest podcast), a Cliff bar, a Swell bottle, and an of-the-moment book: Zadie Smith’s Swing Time.
What you can’t see: her apartment applications, a coffee-stained New Yorker, her soul slowly deteriorating—basically, the NYC usual. Watch her in action above if you feel like being targeted.
