Barbie Apologista

When Josie was three or four, she went through what cartoonist Joe Sayers might call the "Princess Girly Precious Cutie Princess" phase, during which she wore a lot of tulle, always carried a fairy wand, and repeatedly asked us to get her a Barbie.

Now, I grew up in a Barbie-free household -- the busty-yet-emaciated blonde having fallen out of favor with the "Free To Be" parenting set -- and even though I had enjoyed the occasional Barbie play at friends' houses, I had no problem explaining to Josie that I thought Barbie's body was freakish, her obsession with clothes disempowering, and her very existence an excuse for corporate America to sell endless collections of tiny, glittery apparel. Josie was disappointed but undaunted by this little lecture. "I know," she announced brightly, "I'll ask my grandmas to get me a Barbie!"

Normally going over our heads like this would have been a brilliant strategy, but in this case it backfired. My mother, on cue, patiently explained to Josie that Barbie's body was freakish, her obsession with clothes disempowering, etc., etc., etc. Andrew's mother -- former tomboy, pioneering female academic, and author of Renaissance Feminism -- was if anything even less likely to come through with the girly goods.

But Josie's interest persisted. Curious about the enduring attraction of this universal symbol of empty-headed femininity, I embarked upon a crash course in Barbie-ology. I learned a number of interesting things. Barbie was created in 1959 by Ruth Handler, a high-powered toy company executive who wanted her daughter to be able to play something besides Mommy: before Barbie, the only dolls around were baby dolls. From the beginning Handler made sure Barbie had an array of exciting careers -- she was a fashion model, of course, but also a doctor, a NASCAR driver, and an astronaut (in 1965, no less). She had Black friends starting in 1967, and in the 1970s Mattel mentored a Black-owned company in Watts that made African American dolls. Sure, the early Black dolls were simply brown plastic poured into the white doll's mold, but Barbies now come in a range of colors and features, and women of color head up the different "ethnic" divisions. Handler's fascinating, self-serving autobiography certainly glossed over a thing or two, but it did seem that the company was more progressive than I'd realized.

I also read about what girls actually do with Barbies -- because like all toys, these dolls are incorporated into kids' imaginative play in ways that defy the manufacturer's intentions. Barbies get dressed up and married off a lot, naturally. But they also get shorn, tattooed, wrapped in electrical tape, even have their pointy little feet stuck in pencil sharpeners. Like girls' social circles, the Barbie universe is female-dominated (Ken is a marginal figure, more of an accessory than a person). Barbie play often explores issues like friendship, loyalty, jealousy, and popularity -- developing girls' social & emotional intelligence and giving them a leg up on middle school dramas to come.

Barbie's iconic femininity has fueled all kinds of artistic undertakings and semiotic musings. One of my favorite theorist likened Barbie's feet:



to the unfinished leg stumps on ancient goddess figurines:

which supposedly allowed the statuettes to be thrust directly into the ground, symbolizing their spiritual connection to the Earth. It seemed a bit of a stretch, to be honest. But knowing that somebody somewhere had managed -- and bothered! -- to draw even the wobbliest of lines between Barbie and the Venus of Willendorf made me realize there was only one way to handle Josie's obsession: Lighten Up. If this foot-tall plastic woman could embody both the horrors of the Patriarchy and the ancient powers of Mother Earth, surely I could trust my four-year-old daughter to journey beyond the confines of feminist orthodoxy in search of a good time.

Then one afternoon Josie burst into the livingroom and unleashed a tangled, breathless rush of words, something about how I was me and my mom was my mom and that if I wanted to I could be a different kind of mom from the mom that my mom was, and -- she paused for breath and we sat there gaping at her, wondering where on earth this was going. Finally she spat it out: "And I want a Barbie."

Now for the most part I'm quite proud to be the kind of mom that my mom was -- when I can pull it off -- but in this case I decided our paths would diverge. I took Josie down to the Pink World at F.A.O Schwarz and bought her a Barbie. Uncle Wilson brought another one when he visited a month later -- with a matching dress for Josie. Eventually a half-dozen more of these leggy ladies entered our household by way of Goodwill, school rummage sales, and older girls downsizing their toy collections. Granny Shan -- creatively maladjusted as always -- contributed an activist grandmother doll (a gray-haired, flat-footed model, complete with laptop and anti-war pickets) and an African American GI Joe whose firefighter gear could be removed to reveal a yellow t-shirt with the words "THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE" stretched across his rippling pecs.

Josie played with her Barbies regularly for a while, before moving on to astronauts (I think), and then Harry Potter. So far she appears to have been unharmed by the experience. Eventually we gathered up the Barbie crew -- some hairless, others missing limbs, all still smiling -- and delivered them to the next Princess Girly Precious Cutie Princess on the block. Whose mother (another "Free To Be" alumna) blanched.

This is Part I of a two-part series on revisionist parenting (is there any other kind?). Coming soon: Confessions of a Quaker Nerf Sniper