Barbies are a feminist problem because they're one of the leading representations of women in terms of the destructive appearance ideal of being very thin and having large breasts at the same time. Barbies can be harmful to girls because they encourage girls to believe that they need to look like Barbies and that they should consider plastic surgery and be perpetually worried about their weight in the effort to attain the Barbie ideal. There might be a problem with boys as well. Awareness of Barbies might also encourage little boys to believe that the only attractive girls are the ones who look like Barbies.On Friday, Babble hosted a parental "smackdown" over Barbie. In one corner: Jeanne Sagera, a parent who once had "feminist outrage" over Barbie but ultimately gave in and allowed her daughter to play with the infamous plastic female. In the other: Mike Adamick, who never wanted a Barbie in his house, but ultimately gave in and allowed his daughter to have one. Let's get ready to agree!
"Now I've seen the actual impact of Barbie up close and I'm not too worried" So, despite dubbing it a "smackdown," it wasn't so much a face off between warring parenting views as it was commiseration over giving in to the pull of plastic-perfect doll. Sagera writes that she was anti-Barbie until she witnessed her daughter's joy at receiving a mermaid Barbie. Then she rationalized that, though Barbie has "impossibly big boobs and and impossibly small waist," she is "hardly the only doll to be lacking in realism."
The RSI household is unique in that I teach feminist political thought and am aware of feminist issues while Mrs. RSI is fairly traditional in being loyal to women as a gender but not particularly interested in feminism. I think Mrs. RSI likes it that I have a feminist awareness, but it fairly cautious about it herself.
As our daughters started to reach "Barbie age," the Barbies came in because Mrs. RSI had no particular problem with them. I remember being reluctant but eventually giving in. Barbies are cheap if you just buy the doll and don't get committed to the various Barbie fantasies and all of the clothes and accessories that go with that. I have to admit that I'm fairly favorable toward anything that's cheap and a Barbie was a $7 birthday or Christmas present in an expensive world. So I started buying Barbies for the girls as well.
But Barbies weren't harmful in our house either. That's mostly because the girls had no context for adapting a Barbie ideal. The RSI household does not have television. So, they saw no Barbie commercials, no clothes commercials, no make-up commercials, and no hair commercials. Not being pervasively exposed to the "Barbie ideal" through the media, the girls did not associate the Barbie ideal with their Barbies. If I remember correctly, Miss Teen RSI was mostly interested in decapitating the Barbies and playing with them in the tub while Miss Tween RSI liked to line up all her dolls--Barbies and non-Barbies alike--and give them time outs. Miss Tween RSI got a lot of time-outs herself. I guess she wanted to share the wealth.
Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story. It's hard to say at this point, but my guess would be that my daughters have adopted the Barbie ideal without associating it with Barbies. Miss Teen RSI is a slave to make-up and dresses in middling fashion and there's no reason to think that Miss Tween won't be. It's extremely difficult for girls to escape from fashion whether they get it from their Barbies or not.
Posts
3 comments:
I would argue that fashion and the Barbie ideal are two separate things. People interested in the "Barbie ideal" may often also be interested in style and clothing, but the two are not the same. Having a sense of style that expresses who you are can be a confidence-building asset for anyone, male or female. It's when this desire for "style" becomes a desire to look like Barbie that girls (and women) can get in trouble. But being thin, blond, busty, and leggy is not essential to having style and confidence. It just takes a lot of (often awkward) experimentation to get there (i.e., the teen years). But I think it's a necessary developmental process.
I think it's kind of funny to have this conversation with you because one thing I always loved about your parenting was how you let the kids dress themselves. In fact, one of my favorite Morehead memories is of Miss Tween RSI as a kid, playing by herself in the creek while wearing a sparkly velvet dress and tennis shoes. It makes me smile every time I think about it.
That kid had some style. Let's just hope the Barbie ideal doesn't derail it somewhere along the way.
- Amanda M.
Interesting comment. I agree that girls can develop their own sense of style but it's extremely difficult because the fashion industry is so ferocious in pushing girls toward some version of the Barbie ideal.
Miss Tween RSI has been better at resisting the commercial models than her sister. She still has her own style and does interesting stuff with her clothes and room. Unfortunately, she faces a lot of peer pressure to be more like everybody else.
The worst thing is that she faces up to that pressure pretty much on her own. Mrs. RSI and I give her encouragement, help her with some of her projects, and buy materials for her. But she's the one who has to navigate through all the comments she gets.
It's tough and I'm not all that optimistic about her emerging from high school with her own sense of style intact.
We'll have to see.
When a gay dude named Ken pulls up in a red convertible, then we'll talk.
Post a Comment