IN CASE you haven’t heard, next month is Barbie’s birthday. The long-legged, thin-waisted blonde bombshell turns fifty this year, and there is no shortage of celebration leading up to the occasion.
Mattel, Inc is taking advantage of the milestone by turning Barbie’s birthday into one giant marketing campaign designed to both boost the doll’s sales and celebrate its legacy. The campaign is already in full gear at New York’s Fashion Week, where an entire runway show was dedicated to outfitting real-life models in Barbie-inspired outfits and sending them marching out on the catwalk. One Barbie model even walked out with a real-life Ken.
Yet in this attempt to honor the icon, Mattel is making Barbie’s legacy seem much less complicated than it actually is. Obviously, the company wants to sell dolls. And at a time of waning sales and a massive recession, there’s nothing like haute couture, big boobs, and — of course — Ken to get you back into a consumer state of mind.
Barbie has been glorified at Fashion Week as a larger-than-life (though less-than-life-sized) figure. Press coverage of the events taking place over the past week has been kind to the doll. Rarely has there been mention of her rocky journey into the twenty-first century, her hip-widening plastic surgery procedure a few years ago, or the intense competition she faces from the newly arrived Bratz dolls. Moreover, press coverage and Fashion Week celebrations have cemented the doll’s transformation from an “it” to a “she.” Society has embraced the transformation of Barbie from plastic to person, blurring the line between childhood entertainment and reality. In doing so, we risk honoring a fictional female superstar for nothing more than having a teeny waist and a trendy wardrobe. Is this the brand of femininity we choose to celebrate?
Admittedly, despite everything that is wrong with Barbie, the doll has withstood the test of time and remains today an internationally recognized figure. For better or worse, she is a goddess in the fashion world and at the same time a reminder of our childhood.
More importantly, her very existence constantly forces us to explore issues of body image, gender identity, and cultural stereotypes. It is impossible to consume the Barbie brand without being confronted in some way by the controversies the doll inspires. In a somewhat roundabout way, Barbie has helped lead us to address serious health issues like bulimia and anorexia that were once taboo, if nonexistent, subjects.
But before we gleefully celebrate Barbie’s fiftieth, we first have to consider the doll’s current status as a cultural symbol. Though undeniably a fashion icon, Barbie has often been a feminist’s punching bag, a plastic representation of all that is wrong with society’s perceptions of women and women’s bodies. After all, according to Vanderbilt University’s Wellness Resource Center, were Barbie to be the size of an actual human, she would be too skinny to have both a tibia and a fibula in her legs, and she wouldn’t be able to stand up because of the disproportionate size of her breasts and head.
Furthermore, Barbie’s porcelain-like skin and radiant blonde hair are far from representative of the population at large. Mattel’s attempts to make Barbie more politically correct, either by putting her in a wheelchair or dressing her in fringed buckskin and a feathered headband, have been superficial and essentialist at best.
So we should think twice before we board the Mattel train and party with Barbie for Fashion Week or for her birthday in March. Oddly enough — or perhaps fittingly, March is also Women’s History Month. At a time when we celebrate the heroines who have helped advance women’s rights in areas like employment and politics, Barbie’s achievements as a fashionista pale in comparison to the true trendsetters of their time — Jane Addams, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, and many more.
Mattel is attempting to return Barbie to her glory days by making her, well, a “her” rather than just a doll, by treating her as a celebrity rather than a plastic mold covered in paint and miniature clothing. Those at Fashion Week have embraced this strategy, bowing down to Barbie as their fashion goddess. The question, then, is not so much whether we’ll be there to celebrate when Barbie’s fiftieth arrives in March. Instead, the question is, what will we be celebrating — an iconic doll we once played with as children, or an iconic woman we strive to be like today?
Amelia Meyer’s column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at a.meyer@cavalierdaily.com.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/4582285/Barbies-50th-birthday-bonanza.html
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