>Five Famous Symbols of American Culture
The Statue of Librty
In the mid-1870s,French artist Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was working on an enormous project
>called Liberty Enlightening the World, amonument celebrationg US independence and the France-
>America alliance.at the same time ,he was in love with a woman whom he had met in Canada.His
>mother could not approve of her son's affection for a woman she had never met,but Bartholdi went
>ahead and married his love in 1876.
That same year Bartholdi bad assembled the staue's right arm and torch ,and displayed them im
>Philadelphia.It is said that he had used his wife's arm as the model, but felt her face was too
>beautiful for the statue.He needed someone whose face represented suffering yet strength,someine
>more severe than beautiful. He chose his mother.

Barbie

Before all the different types of Barbie dolls for sale now,there was just asingle
>Barbie.Actually,her name was Barbara.
Barbara Handler was the daughter of Elliot and Ruth Handler,co-founders of the Mattel Toy
>Company.Ruth came up with the idea for Barbie after watching her daughter play with paper dolls.
The three-dimensional model for Barbie was a German doll - a joke gift for adults described as
>having the appearance of "a woman who sold sex".Mattel refashioned the doll into a decent,all-
>American-although with an exaggerated breast size - version and named it after Barbara,who was
>then a teenager.
Now more than sixty years old, Barbara - who declines interviews but is said to have loved the
>doll - may be the most famous unknown figure on the planet.
Barbie's boyfriend ,ken, was introduced in 1961 and named after Barbara's brother.The real
>Ken,who died in 1994,was disgusted by the doll that made his family famous. "I don't want my
>children to play with it," he said in 1993.
> American Gothic
Grant Wood instantly rose to fame in 1930 with his painting American Gothic , an oftencopied
>interpretation of the solemn pride of American farmers . The painting shows a serious-looking man
>and a woman standing in front of a farmhouse . He was strongly influenced by midieval artists and
>inspired by the Gothic window of an old farmhousem,but the faces in his composition were what
>captured the world's attention
wook liked to paint faces he knew well. For the grave farmer he used his dentist, a sour-
>looking man.For the woman standing alongside him ,the artist chose his sister,Nan.He stretched the
>models'necks a bit, but there wwas no doubt who posed for the portrait.
Nan later remarked that the fame she gained from American Gothic saved her from a very boring
>life .
The Buffalo Nickel
Today, American coins honor prominent figures of the USgovernment - mostly famous former
>presidents. But the Buffalo nickel,produced from 1913 to 1938 ,honored a pair of connected
>tragedies from the settlement of the American frontier - the destruction of the buffalo ferds and
>the American Indians.
While white people had previously been used as models for most American coins, famed artist
>James Earle Fraser went against tradition by using three actual American Indians as models for his
>creation.
for the buffalo on the other side ,since buffalo no longer wandered about the great grasslands,
>Fraser was forced to sketch an aging buffalo from New York City's Central Park Zoo.Two years
>later,in 1915,this animal was sold for $199 and killed for meat ,a hide, and a wall decoration
>made from its horns.
Uncle Sam
Fourteen-year-old Sam Wilson ran away from home to join his father and older brothers in the
>fight to liberate the American colonies from the British during the American Revolution.At age
>23,he started a meatpacking business and earned a reputation for being honest and hard working .
During a later war in 1812 ,Wilson gained a position inspecting meat for US Army
>forces,working with a man who had signed a contract with the government to provide meat to the
>army. Barrels of meat supplied to the army were stamped "EA-US",identifying the conpany (EA) and
>country of origin(US).According to one story, when a government official visited the plant and
>asked about the letters, a creative employee toldd him"US" was short for "Uncle Sam" Wilson. Soon
>soldiers were saying all Army supplies were from "Uncle Sam".
After the war, a character called Uncle Sam began appearing in political cartoons, his form
>evolving from an earlier cartoon character called Brother Jonathan that was popular during the
>American Revolution.Uncle Sam soon replace Brother Jonathan as American's most popular symbol.The
>most enduringportrait of Uncle Sam was created by artist James Montgomery Flagg in his famous
>army recruiting posters of World Wars I and II. That version - a tall man with white hair and a
>small white beard on his chin , a dark blue boat and a tall hat with stars on it - was a self-
>fortrait of Flagg.
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