Virtually 30 years in the past, after I researched and wrote a historical past of the folks and concepts that led to the creation of Barbie, I had little question she can be as talked about in 2023 as she was in 1959, when she first appeared.
However what I by no means anticipated was the best way that this plastic object, as soon as tarred as anti-feminist, has come to be considered as feminist, or, in any occasion, as an vital cultural touchstone in understanding feminism.
From the get-go, Barbie and her possessions mirrored and formed {the marketplace}, experiencing meteoric gross sales when her consumption patterns and actions have been in concord with the zeitgeist, and weathering blistering criticism once they weren’t.
Barbie is in tune with the instances once more — a minimum of as she seems in Greta Gerwig’s new movie interpretation of her, popping out Friday. The film’s zany, self-ironic manufacturing design means that Gerwig is just not solely nicely versed in feminism but in addition in camp, an aesthetic sensibility that values artifice, exaggeration and parody. This strikes me as the suitable sensibility to analyze Barbie.
RELATED: ‘Barbie’ evaluate: A life in plastic appears to be like implausible
Gerwig has picked up on the female-centric universe that many little women create across the doll and her principal accent: “She’s the whole lot. He’s simply Ken,” reads the movie’s poster.
Whereas I think each armchair gender theorist might be deconstructing Gerwig’s film quickly, Barbie’s resurgence of recognition has made me think about her relationship to the assorted waves of feminism which have pummeled her surfboard since she first took kind right here in Southern California.
The primary Barbies got here with a classy enterprise swimsuit and a portfolio of trend sketches, paraphernalia for a profession in design. One may argue that this model of the doll — with an unabashedly horny physique, no husband and a self-supporting job — despatched a proto-feminist message to little women. With objects somewhat than phrases, it preached the gospel of Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 ebook “Intercourse and the Single Woman,” an anti-marriage manifesto and an argument for girls’s monetary and sexual autonomy.
Second-wave feminists, nevertheless, sneered on the tiny profession garments and noticed nothing however the creepy, unrealistic physique beneath them.
Within the ’80s, Barbie had one other pivot. A serious recession compelled extra ladies into the workforce, and Barbie went with them. Day-to-Evening Barbie (1985) had a pink energy swimsuit, a briefcase and got here out concurrently the dolls’ startling new anthem, “We Ladies Can Do Something.”
By 2016, presumably in response to this motion, a workforce of Mattel executives and designers made the primary adjustments to Barbie’s iconic physique — including millimeters of width to her thighs and waist and lowering her formidable breasts. They might, in fact, have had different motivations: In response to a 2016 Washington Submit article, Barbie’s share of the worldwide dolls and equipment market had declined yearly since 2009. What may Mattel lose by shaking issues up?
Apparently, nothing. Barbie reversed her decline. However one factor stayed the identical: Just like the “We Ladies Can Do Something” workforce within the Eighties, the creators of the 2016 Barbie refused to determine as feminists.
This week, Warner Bros. and Mattel will launch a movie by a feminine director with a feminist observe document. But what phrase did Mattel govt Robbie Brenner, who spearheaded the mission, inform Time that she wouldn’t apply to the film?
You guessed it.
In Barbie’s world, nevertheless, objects converse louder than phrases. Between her huge array of ethnicities and physique varieties — to not point out professions and personas — she is clearly a powerful, impartial girl.
So why gained’t Mattel say “feminist”? Maybe they simply balk at stating the plain.
M.G. Lord is the writer of “Ceaselessly Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Actual Doll” and co-host of the podcast “L.A. Made: The Barbie Tapes” from LAist Studios. ©2023 Los Angeles Instances. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.
