My favourite Barbie was the one with the blue party dress and the poofy eighties fringe. My second favourite was my Party Pink Barbie which came adorned in pink, jewels and glitz – the showstopper being a furry pink shawl sprinkled with sparkly silver stuff. I had some other pretend ‘Barbies’ that I managed to destroy: I used hand soap to wash one doll’s beautiful red hair and it remains, to this very day, stuck together in one giant dreadlock; and I had a mermaid Cindy (or something) which apparently was not supposed to be used in water despite the fact that she came with a beautiful mermaid tail – her crimped hair changed from ‘Darryl Hannah in Splash‘ to ‘Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich‘. Poor dollies. Taiwanese plastic is pretty sturdy but does allow for creativity that encompasses body modification, hair design and facial piercings. If my mom had taken a look at my Barbies perhaps she wouldn’t have been so surprised when I got my first tattoo, purple-black hair and piercing. I spent many a happy hour ‘playing Barbies’ with neighbours, friends, cousins and even brothers – although their version of the game was called ‘army bases’ and involved G.I. Joes, lego, micro-machines, farmyard animals and plants from the garden. Barbie worked, slept, had sex with Ken (because that’s what she had to do to have a baby), went to parties, had fights with her friends, looked after her pets … and … and … and. The one rule with Barbie was that she could only talk in an American accent – usually a bad one; dependent on how many hours her owner spent in front of the TV. When I was a kid I was mostly restricted to the likes of Mary Poppins and The
Sound of Music so my poor Barbies sounded like a Julie Andrews wannabe but I quickly learnt from my friends and after a few episodes of Barbie and the Rockers my dolls spoke like a regular Jem.
My Barbies are currently all packed away in a box, until the glorious day that I will be able to relive my childhood Barbie-playing days with my own daughter (or son I guess). And Lo and behold; this very day draws nigh, as my little girl readies to make her entrance into the world in three week’s time. While I can’t wait to whip my Barbies out of their hidey-hole, I am a tad weary. My worst fear about having a daughter is the high potential for low self esteem and poor body image stemming from media intrusion and perhaps my own body insecurities that have come largely from being raised in Western culture. That being said, I don’t suffer from poor body image. I complain about my big ass and flabby thighs on the occasion but I am happy with the way I am, and I credit my body confidence to a mom who raised me telling me I am beautiful and straining media intrusion as much as was humanly possible. She fed me healthy food from a young age and never fussed about how much I ate or my weight. Her lack of emphasis on the physical allowed me to be myself, and she loved me for it. She has been a great example of what it means to be a woman and I have a great platform from which to teach my own daughter. The point: I played with Barbies and I certainly do not have what is commonly referred to as “Barbie syndrome“. In fact, I am probably the antithesis of Barbie. Naturally I understand that my daughter is not me and may be influenced differently by the external stimuli around her yet it is my job to instil values within her and the rest of the world cannot be blamed if I do a poor job of it. So Barbie gets a bad rap as far as I am concerned.
My Barbie experience sounds like a feminist nightmare and the Barbie debate was once again brought to the fore when Barbie celebrated her 50th birthday earlier this year. In an article entitled Dumb blonde – or diehard feminist, Moira Redmond (pro Barbie) and Julie Bindel (against Barbie) thrashed out their opinions in a war of words:
Redmond argues the fact that Barbie stimulates imagination because she can be anything. She allows girls to live out their fantasies within a safe context: deciding what she wears, giving her a new hairdo, voicing thoughts that are repressed throughout a day,
flinging her across the room or hiding her in a cupboard when you don’t feel like being outshone. Barbie is also described by Redmond as a brilliant career role model because she has been a doctor, a vet, a palaeontologist, an astronaut, a fire fighter, a pop singer, a teacher and a film star. She has even been a presidential candidate. Barbie does care about her appearance but also cares about animals, food, a career and the world around her. Barbie is what her owner makes of her. She is anything and everything and inspires independent-mindedness in girls.
Bindel opposes Redmond’s ideas in her claims that Barbie merely aids in the stereotyping of children’s ideas relating to the gender roles that have been prescribed by society. The fact that Barbie is modelled on a German “porn doll” called Lillie, who was in turn based on a comic strip character marketed to lecherous men, promotes the idea of Barbie as a gold digging prostitute. Bindel states that if Barbie was life-size, she’d measure 36-18-33, stand 5ft 9in and weigh 7st 12lb – 35lbs underweight for a woman that height. And the most interesting part of Bindel’s argument is her reference to a study completed by academic Agnes Nairn about how brands are perceived by seven- to 11-year-old schoolchildren. Nairn found that many of the girls see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity and think nothing of pulling off her limbs and putting her in the microwave. No other toy provoked such a negative response. Nairn concludes that “Barbies are obviously viewed as disposable. That is why they are destroyed and thrown away.”
What the arguments of both these women serve to show is that everyone has a different experience of Barbie and perspective is fundamental. Redmond views Barbie-violence as therapeutic and Bindel views it as psychotic. Either way, each situation will be contextual and it would be difficult to make a blanket statement about the nature of an action – a child’s interaction with a Barbie doll is influenced by many things including temperament and situational context, and most importantly a parent’s teaching. Barbie is just a doll and although her connotations have become largely negative, the mere thought that an inanimate object can dictate and dominate the psyche and childhood experience of an individual sounds a tad too much like passing the buck.
