Barbie is a doll, a friend, and I'm not Barbie because I'm a human being. I can only speak from my own personal experiences, but I was always bustier, fatter, and shorter than a majority of my classmates, and Barbie never made me feel bad about the way I looked. "Barbie was like a cartoon or art that was an exaggerated version of real life and people, so I never felt like I needed to look a certain way because of my Barbie, that happened at school amongst my peers." "My toys, to me, were toys, and they were incredibly important and special to me, but I knew that Barbie was a character and not a living breathing person," says Micheline Pitt. But Barbie? She seems to be collateral damage in the culture wars. Society and mean girls at school? Definitely. It's a complicated situation, for sure, where the intent behind the inclusion of the phrase was decimated by the negative impact.īy and large, it seems like the majority of people never actually felt bad about themselves because of Barbie. While we're on the subject, Teen Talk Barbie had her own controversy for containing the pre-recorded phrase, "Math class is tough!" The intention behind the statement was to validate the difficulty many children have with math class, but concerned parents and activist groups worried that it perpetuated the stigma that girls have no place in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) subjects. Joes said things like, "The beach is a fun place for summer!" Meanwhile, Teen Talk Barbie was saying, "Vengeance is mine!" Joes in stores to showcase the ridiculous gender stereotypes encouraged by children's playthings. There were plenty of Barbie critics in the 1960s and '70s as second-wave feminism gained popularity, but the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO) in the 1990s made mainstream headlines after switching the voiceboxes of Barbies and G.I. because Ruth Handler had recently left Mattel following charges of fraud and false reporting to the U.S. The doll was designed by a well-intentioned albeit totally missing-the-mark man. Judy Blume's "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" was published just five years prior, and considering the moral panic that accompanied that book, it's unsurprising that this doll also came under fire. Weirdly, cranking the arm also increased the size of her bust. Regardless, it wasn't a good look.Ī decade later, Barbie attempted to educate the masses about puberty with the Growing Up Skipper doll that would slowly increase the doll's height by cranking her arm. Though there are plenty (myself included) who argue that these are more of a reflection of the messaging that already existed in the media and not a Barbie-specific call to action to promote thinness. However, this controversial reputation didn't help things in 1963 when Babysitter Barbie was introduced, complete with a doll-sized book featuring the weight loss advice "Don't Eat," or the Slumber Party Barbie's scale locked at 110 pounds released in 1965. Between headline-making controversies in real life, endless merchandising crossovers, an expansive line of storytelling between film, television, and web-based entertainment, as well as the semi-universal experiences of growing up playing with the doll, consider this a crash course in the fantastic, plastic life of Barbie. Rather than provide an extensive look at the history of Mattel and Barbie ("Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie" and "Toys that Made Us: Barbie" already exist for that), I'm here to talk about the lore of Barbie. Luckily for all of you reading at home, my obsessive fandom tendencies date back to childhood and I've consumed enough Barbie history over the years for many lifetimes. Gerwig herself had to attend a " Barbie Boot Camp" before taking on the film, which is something many audience members could likely benefit from as well. With Greta Gerwig's live-action "Barbie" movie arriving imminently, it's high time that we celebrate one of the greatest figures of pop culture.
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