29. Nicki Minaj, Pink Friday
By the time, Nicki Minaj dropped Pink Friday in 2010, she was already a household name for Hip-Hop enthusiasts thanks to her conquering the underground circuit with her Beam Me Up Scotty and Barbie World mixtapes. Spinning off the animated theme of Barbie-dom, this cover featured her looking more like Ms. Malibu than the doll’s Black buddy, Christie. Nicki knew that for her to hit the top mark, she had to steal the best from the top Alpha girls: Lil Kim and the Mattel queen. With her elongated legs in a sprawling silver corset, pink stilettos, and a candy pink wig she fed the agalmatophilia that exists in so many in American culture.
Fantasy feeding, Nicki’s cover teeters on child-like pink imagery and silvery adult content. Pink Friday is iconic and weird because it was jarringly sexy, and disturbingly similar to an FAO Schwarz wonderland. And is making us look at these dolls our girls emulate differently.