I Had High Expectations For Barbie

Barbies in the early days really doubled down on both unrealistic beauty standards and on diet culture. One of them was Slumber Party Barbie. I believe she came with a scale and had these little diet books with the “diet advice” in them that was like, “Don’t eat.”

That was the advice!

Right, it’s really damaging and damning stuff to put into a little girl’s head. The scales were set to a certain number, I think it was like 110 or something like that. The point is these toys were like an instruction manual, and you’re giving them to a little girl saying, “Do this.” And with these toys, you’re really starting them down this lifetime path of potential body dysmorphia and issues with weight. Barbie is definitely complicit in that historically, and I think we have to remember that Barbie, she has all these incredible careers now — but her very first career was teen model.

Until the film came out, I hadn’t given much thought to Barbie, although I think my daughter had a cheap version of one at some point around 4 years old. We mostly just wanted to do her hair and I remember not wanting her to want one because of the unrealistic body shape.

Culture rewards traits that are considered masculine and devalues traits that seem feminine, according to Tracy M. Hallstead at Quinnipiac University. From childhood, boys and men are told to “man up” to appear tough by distancing themselves from feminine things. Boys learn that it is shameful to be seen as emotional, dependent, or vulnerable. Men raised in this way may disown femininity and may even learn to despise it. In this view, misogyny is directed not only at women, but at any feminine qualities that men see within themselves.

This contempt for the feminine causes men feel that they must assert their dominance over women by controlling them, Hallstead writes. She illustrates this with the ancient story of Pygmalion, a sculptor who hated “the faults beyond measure which nature has given to women.”  Pygmalion creates a sculpture of a woman that magically comes alive. Pygmalion is very gratified by the complete control he has over the woman, Galatea, because this control re-enforces his masculinity. He considers Galatea the perfect woman, in spite of his contempt for women, because of his absolute power over her. This deep desire to have complete control over women is often mislabeled as romantic. Jean-Léon Gérôme also painted about slave markets, very disturbing paintings of women getting purchased.

“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

 

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behaviour, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.

 

But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.

 

It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

 

I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

If Barbie did one thing, it gave us voices. Perhaps outdated voices some of the time but still a voice.  I love these words from Rebecca Solnit’s article;

Silence and powerlessness go hand in hand – women’s voices must be heard

Being unable to tell your story is a living death, and sometimes a literal one. If no one listens when you say your ex-husband is trying to kill you, if no one believes you when you say you are in pain, if no one hears you when you say help, if you don’t dare say help, if you have been trained not to bother people by saying help. If you are considered to be out of line when you speak up in a meeting, are not admitted into an institution of power, are subject to irrelevant criticism whose subtext is that women should not be here or heard.

 

Stories save your life. And stories are your life. We are our stories; stories that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison. We make stories to save ourselves or to trap ourselves or others – stories that lift us up or smash us against the stone wall of our own limits and fears. Liberation is always in part a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, making new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place.

 

Violence against women is often against our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of our voices, and of what a voice means: the right to self-determination, to participation, to consent or dissent; to live and participate, to interpret and narrate.

 

Having a voice is crucial. It’s not all there is to human rights, but it’s central to them, and so you can consider the history of women’s rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence. Speech, words, voices sometimes change things in themselves when they bring about inclusion, recognition: the rehumanisation that undoes dehumanisation. Sometimes they are only the preconditions to changing rules, laws, regimes to bring about justice and liberty.

 

Sometimes just being able to speak, to be heard, to be believed, are crucial parts of membership in a family, a community, a society. Sometimes our voices break those things apart; sometimes those things are prisons.

By redefining whose voice is valued, we redefine our society and its values.

The Irony of Having High Expectations

The irony is not lost on me. I have high expectations of myself and that is exactly what Barbie’s message was- we create impossible standards to live up to. While feminism may have opened up the world to women in many ways, this freedom has not replaced society’s expectations of what a woman ‘should be’. Instead, they have piled on top of them. Having it all and looking effortless while doing it. It’s nonsense and it is making us ill-as women and as a society.

Perhaps I should have just enjoyed the light entertainment of the film, its just a doll.

But at least I am using my voice.

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