Barbie Girl

I've been thinking about Barbie lately. My dear sweet daughter received her first Barbie doll in the form of Disney's Rapunzel for her third birthday about a year ago. And I probably shouldn't have been surprised when a friend asked, "So...you're going to let her play with Barbies?" implying that my choice was kind of controversial and possibly a bad call. It's not a secret that Barbie is usually under fire for her unrealistic figure and her penchant for material goods. While I felt like I had already made up my mind about Barbies, my friend made me feel like maybe I needed to give Barbie a second thought, just in case I was missing something. When Ivy received several more Barbies a couple weeks ago, I realized we were entering the Barbie phase of childhood, and if I was going to have a problem with her presence in my house I needed to speak now or forever hold my peace.

I grew up with Barbies. My childhood friend and I played with Barbies pretty much every time we went to each other's houses. She had even more than I did due to the fact that she had an older sister who had grown out of hers in addition to her own collection. But that is certainly not to say that I didn't have way too many myself. And by the time my younger sister had grown out of hers, our house was seriously packed with them. I remember cleaning out the toy closet when we were older and piling all our Barbie dolls into their respective vehicles (you know, a limo, a van, an RV, a Corvette...it's normal to have that many vehicles, right?) and had a "Barbie parade" around the basement, just in honor of old times. So all this to say, I've shared many a good time with my old pal, Barbie (and Skipper and Stacey and Ken and...)

It's not much of a secret to those who know me that I'm a bit of a feminist. So I probably shouldn't be shocked when people who didn't know me as a kid are surprised that I have little issue with Barbie. Many people (usually women) complain that Barbie gives a false image of the female body. And I'm not arguing that. But that's something we as adults put onto her. It never once occurred to me as a child that Barbie was giving me a false image of what I should look like when I'm older. Why would I think that I could look like Barbie when every single woman around me, ever, looked differently than Barbie? I don't ever once remember thinking that I would or could or should look like Barbie (even being the blond haired, blue-eyed kid that I was).

Barbies do not target an age group that are concerned with body image anyway. By the time I was worried about what I looked like in the mirror, I had far outgrown playing with Barbies. And I didn't learn to be insecure about my body from Barbie. (And for that matter, I didn't learn it from magazine covers or celebrities either). I learned it from the women and men around me. I learned it from my mom, from my dad, from my aunts, uncles, teachers and friends who subtly or overtly communicated that my value is/was in what I look like. And maybe they weren't always directing it at me, in fact it rarely was, but watching people fall into the trap of believing their own value is in what they look like is probably the most powerful influence in a child being insecure herself. Would I have believed that what I look like determines my value if I hadn't been watching my own mother fall into that fallacy herself? Would Barbie alone make me think my body wasn't beautiful or good enough without the influence of others corroborating that idea?

I'm not trying to come down hard on my mother or anyone else who has influenced me that direction. The truth is, we ALL suffer from the distorted view that we are as valuable as the people around us perceive us to be (whether that comes from beauty, intelligence, charm, wealth or whatever).

I think it's easy to give Barbie and other things too much credit for distorting us when in reality we are to blame. We carry ourselves down the path of insecurity and we take others with us. It's easy to blame an outside influence like Barbie because then we don't have to look inside ourselves and acknowledge the part we play in influencing others.

Well, I could stew over whether I said this all exactly how I wanted to and end up not publishing it, or I could publish it with imperfections. "Done is better than perfect," as they say. And I will end on that.

One more thing though, here's a link to some other good thoughts about being pro-Barbie (and still remaining a feminist :))