Feminist writer and human rights activist Natasha Walter pens her thoughts on Barbie’s evolution over the years and the promises it holds for feminism, as the Barbie movie set to hit the screens this week.
“Mattel’s dedication to using feminist language to sell more and more plastic flotsam to women seems to me to be a poor return on our former dreams of thoroughgoing social change.”
Crazy as this might sound, 10 years ago I honestly thought Barbie was tottering on her tiptoes, ready for a well-earned retirement. A few years earlier, my book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, had energetically questioned why we not only assumed it was natural that girls would love dolls but also why we expected girls to turn themselves into pretty objects in turn.
My questions coincided with growing unease in society with the way the apparently innocuous doll contributed to harsh stereotypes for girls. Barbie made girls less ambitious, psychologists said, or more prone to eating disorders. Sales began to slide; “Barbie slump”, the headlines had it in 2016, or “Barbie out of fashion”.
But just as we started to think it was time for Barbie to be consigned to landfill, the manufacturer, Mattel, gave her a fresh look – or rather, any number of fresh looks. In response to fading enthusiasm for the doll, with her cookie-cutter skinny blonde looks, we’ve had a run of new Barbies. Black Barbies with natural hair, Barbies in wheelchairs, with hearing aids and vitiligo, and all sorts of role model Barbies from Jane Goodall Barbie to Clara Amfo Barbie. And now, with all the glamour that Margot Robbie, Issa Rae and Greta Gerwig can bring to the beach party, Barbie rises yet again. This time, we’re told, she’s empowering. This time, we’re told, she’s actually funny. This time, even if you hate Barbie, you’ll love Barbie.
So the release of the film Barbie has cued a slew of commentators explaining why feminists should learn to stop worrying and love the doll. To an extent, I agree. I never banned the pink plastic ones from my children’s toybox. In fact, Barbies seemed to wander into my daughter’s bedroom of their own accord as gifts and hand me downs from friends and family. As research shows, playing with dolls can stimulate empathy and imagination, and I enjoyed listening to my daughter and her friends chattering away as they took the plastic people on crazy adventures.
So I don’t want to overstate the pernicious influence of Barbie herself. I get that she is just a doll, and most women can take or leave her, play with her or bin her, and might even be inspired by her. Just as it isn’t Instagram alone that fuels narcissism, or the Kardashians alone who enforce unrealistic body expectations, no single brand, model or social media platform should be the target for feminists’ concerns about why inequality and sexism are so damn hard to shift.
But in her own little way, Barbie tells us something about the bigger impasse in which women still find ourselves. The plethora of new, aspirational Barbies, who combine cool jobs with gleaming smiles and shiny hair, serve to remind us just how hard it still is even for successful and experienced women to be valued if they don’t also show doll-like qualities – prettiness, neat wardrobe, perfect shape, youthful faces. In a world in which women are told they can be anything, too often they still have to be dolls as well.
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