YOU GUYS.
YOU GUYS.
SERIOUSLY.
BARBIE HAS A NEW BODY.
Mattel, in finally responding to the heavy critiques of the crazily disproportionate and whitewashed Barbie, has released new sets of dolls that feature different shapes (well 2) and different heights (okay also just 2… but still!). Barbie also now comes in a MUCH more realistic array of skintones, and has everything from Natural to natural to unnatural (hello gorgeous shade of blue) hair colors and ‘dos.
Besides the obvious reasons that this is really great, there are some underlying effects of this change I think are worth noting.
1) The Rorschach Test
For those who didn’t take Psych 101 (I’m an expert it’s no big deal), the Rorschach test is that famous ink blot test where the test-taker describes what they see in ink blots and then is psychoanalyzed based on their responses. My question to you is: if it is predominately mothers and older teens (definitely NOT Barbie’s demographic, but still their purchasing demographic) who have been making a fuss over Barbie’s unrealistic homogeneity, then what do we think a young girl socialized the U.S. and the world of today is going to say when she sees the differently sized Barbies?
“Hello, I’m a fat person, fat, fat, fat,”
…says a 6 year old Time Magazine’s Eliana Dockterman overheard playing in a focus group with curvy Barbie. When adults entered the room to chat with the girls, the very same kids would refuse to say the word fat, which Dockterman says is due to anti-bullying measures in schools, and which Barbie’s Research Team (dream job?) said wasn’t true even just 3 years ago. So there’s some hope that the tide towards body acceptance, not only of your own body but of others’ is changing. I hope it is fast enough that there will be a day very soon when the difference in sizes between Barbies is seen, maybe still as fat, but without the negative connotation society attaches to that word. Hopefully the anti-bullying measures, the self-love campaigns, the “live healthy don’t diet” movement will have an impact not only on the girls, but on their mothers who in all liklihood struggle with the same issues.
2) Ideal Body Shapes
So there are ALWAYS going to be dolls that don’t live up to reality… that’s kind of the point of most dolls (except those creepy baby dolls that swim…), but I want to emphasize, and will continue to do so to any future daughters/young girls I am lucky enough to influence, that just because we’ve expanded the definition of “body types worthy of Barbie” doesn’t mean that Barbie can still be this standard we (un/sub)consciously hold ourselves and other women to. Mattel (the company that makes Barbie) has often pointed the finger at other infulences on girls’ lives in shaping their view of ideal feminem physicality– including models and pop stars and even their own mothers (I know, I cried too). While I understand the need to not take blame on yourself in a capitalistic doll-eat-doll world, it’s a little unfair to shift the idea of building the most right-looking girl off of Barbie’s shoulders when she, for so long, has been made, as Barbie biographer (nope, this is the dream job) M.G. Lord said “to teach women what—for better or worse—is expected of them in society.” Sure, there are “career” Barbies, and that is awesome and shows a belief that Barbie (and that ideal of womanhood) can be whatever she wants to be. BUT notice that Barbie was always the same type of perfect underneath those various costumes. It’s as though Barbie’s clothes were what gave her her job title, status, and knowledge. It’s as though she could only do that once she had reached that unrealistic, homogenous ideal. Only that type of woman would be able to be a doctor (becuase staying unhealthily skinny and being white and blonde and being permanantly on tip-toes is what makes a good doctor right??) and only that type of woman could ever hope to achieve what Barbie did.
BUT NOW, we have some more differences in shapes and heights and coloring and hair types and styles and I can’t help but think that the ways in which Barbie is packaged differently represents a way in which women are women (and you can define that however you want to) and we’re all just packaged differently.
3) Clothes
Dockterman talks at the beginning about how some of the clothes don’t fit certain Barbies and shoes are different and that’s so tough because you’ll need to buy more stuff, recognize which is whose stuff, and of course deal with the storage of tiny (terribly painful to step on) high heels. I get why that’s annoying– sepcifically the buying more and storing more part… but I don’t think that annoyance of differently fitting clothes is actually so bad. I kind of think it’s great. There was a point when I was starving myself (literally, this is not a casual joke because that would be terrible) where I could go into a store, try on anything and it would fit decently enough that it could get on my body, be zipped up, and be purchaseable. This says more about the ways in which designers design clothes and the bodies they have in mind then it does about me personally… but in gaining weight back I started trying stuff on that didn’t fit, wouldn’t go on, or squeezed and pinched me in some weird and foreign ways. BUT THAT IS LIFE. THAT IS HOW NORMAL PEOPLE WEAR CLOTHES. And to have a doll that doesn’t have everything perfectly tailored to every doll might help break that idea that got planted somewhere along my journey (even before the eating disorder) that clothes were always supposed to fit, and that if they didn’t (whether in the store, or in my friends’ closets) there was something wrong with my body. Something wrong with me. I know, it sounds irrational… it totally is. But don’t lie to me and say you’ve never sighed heavily while trying on clothes wondering why the f*** you can’t just be the right size.
Anyway… I could imagine little Madi sitting around playing a game where the central notion was girls not fitting into each others’ clothes and trying to navigate the politics of that. My Barbies and Bratz dolls used to always be in sororities…it was good practice for dealing with women in college and this little huge dynamic would have been, and still would be, great to have in my imaginary repetoire for how to be a grown up girl.
4) Storylines
That brings me to my last point (for now): Storylines. You KNOW you had some EPIC narrative arcs going for your dolls, complete with character devleopment, social skill development, and most importantly DRAMA DEVELOPMENT. But there’s really only so much you can do with a Barbie-dream-house-room full of worse-than-waifish blonde women (and maybe a Ken). I remember getting my Bratz dolls and finally feeling like I had some more freedom in what was going on in my sorority house. You guys, I don’t know with the sorority thing, don’t ask… it was probably the only way in which I could imagine a houseful of women (which is sad in and of itself… Hey, I said don’t ask). Sasha became my go-to protaganist and Chloe was her best friend while the Barbies were the mean bitches in the corner (that probably says something about the way in which Mean Girls are portrayed (as blonde skinny women) and the ways in which blonde skinny women are portrayed (as Mean Girls)). But when I got tired of that storyline I still had other options to explore besides bouncing clones of each other around in different costumes with (maybe) some different hair colors and (even more rarely) different skin tones.
Giving girls (and boys ofc) more options will only help develop their storytelling abilities, their social skills, their imaginations! And that’s what Barbie should be all about.