Does Barbie Bleed?
Dolls are toys. I know this. I know it in the same way that I acknowledge that movies are 'only' entertainment. But does this mean that they have no social significance or impact on our lives? Women have campaigned for years to widen Barbie's waist, make her available in various skin colors, and generally make her more accessible to young girls. But at the end of the day, she is what she is - an overly perfect vision of a woman.
She has everything - money, success, romance - in doses that most of us can only dream of. It is no wonder that I felt a little conflicted whenever I played with my Barbie as a child. Where was the reality? Who else in my life looked or acted like that? Granted, I say this knowing that children who grew up in Hollywood may have had a different experience, but in my little corner of the world women were not slim, buxom, immaculately dressed, perfectly coiffed, accomplished and rich.
Perhaps this is why, rather than being blithely content to play with my perfect, plastic pal, giving her day trips in her pink Jeep, fashion shows on her catwalk, or romantic picnics with her beau, I seemed to always find trouble for poor Barbie. Adversity, tragedy, and disaster inevitably played a role in our playtime together. I know, I know, before you all say it, this may not have reflected the normal playtime of a healthy, stable child, but hear me out.
For me, to relate to Barbie, she needed to be more real. To have a personality worth knowing, she needed to have had events to mold it. To discover the type of gal she was, I needed to discover how she would deal with difficult situations. Lost in the jungle of weeds at the bottom of the garden would she curl up and cry, lamenting the loss of her new Gucci heels? Or would she prove to be made of tougher stuff and battle her way past the stinging nettles to emerge triumphant and proud, sure in her ability to deal with whatever life threw at her?
While her counterparts may have enjoyed tea on the lawns, hours of outfit changes and decisions on which new accessory to buy for her mansion, my Barbie faced car crashes (down the stairs), rock climbing (up the stairs) and personal loss (Ken mysteriously vanished one night, and despite Barbie's valiant searches into the wilderness of my little brothers room, he was never seen again.) Yet, through everything she came out on top. Perhaps a little more dishevelled and dirty than my friends' dolls, but I felt closer to her from knowing that she was not a quitter. She had a depth that didn't come in a package, and she developed attributes such as pride, sass, independence and a sense of adventure along with me.
Barbie will always look beautiful. She will always be rich. She will always have handsome boyfriends. She will always be these things because her audience of young girls are no different to the rest of us: they want to dream big dreams. They want to live in a safe, perfect world. But in a world where our children play increasingly in an imaginative void, where characters and situations are supplied for them, along with a set list of prescribed actions, I hope that my daughter will put her Barbie in as many challenging scenarios as I did, and perhaps in exploring her imaginary friend's reactions, she will be exploring her own character, and begin to define what she believes is important in the real world.
