(Okay, let's get one thing straight before we start; I love Barbie, I get really defensive about Barbie, and I will fight you. This particular post was inspired by someone calling me a Barbie and meaning it to be insulting and me responding by getting really loud and dropping a lot of facts about my favorite feminist icon.)
This morning I was doing my hair before work. I pulled it back into a nice high ponytail and brushed my bangs so they were no longer sticking up, which is how my pillow likes to style them. Long with bangs, like this, is my favorite way to wear my hair. It probably has something to do with the fact that I know how to wear my hair down and I know how to put my hair in a ponytail and that is really it. Feeling satisfied with how I looked for the day, with my button up crop top and high-waisted jeans I left for work and passed by a shelf in my bedroom that has a few bits and baubles from my life that I haven't gotten rid of over the course of time. One of the items on the upper shelves is an old Barbie doll from the early 90s.
This particular Barbie was my favorite (that survived my childhood. I had other favorites over the course of my childhood but things that are loved by 5 year olds don't always live long lives.) and one of three that did not get passed on to small children I knew back when Toy Story 3 came out and made me feel guilty about my bin full of Barbies and Barbie related accessories (which I almost called excessories, just goes to show that I have been on too much of a minimalism kick recently) that were not being loved properly. She is a gymnast with arms and legs that have real joints, flat feet so she can land those complicated acrobatics, and an American flag leotard. When I was young I saw a gymnast FLY and I wanted to do that, so naturally I got the Barbie. I owned a lot of Barbies like that. I loved my horseback riding lessons and I had a Barbie who rode horses as well, she even rode English style which is what I was learning at the time. My first favorite Barbie was a camping Barbie, she had a backpack that fit all of the things she needed for hiking, including a water bottle and a sleeping bag, she was a serious backpacker and at the time my family lived close enough to my great grandparents' cabin in the mountains that we went there pretty regularly. Barbie was a grown up who did all of the things I loved too and now I am a grown up and I do the things that I love.
Barbie influenced a lot of who I am as an adult, in good ways. I won't gloss over the fact that standing there looking at my last Barbie I became extremely aware that my hairstyle and hers for the day were exactly the same, with the exception of her being blond and me being brunette, this is not my favorite way to wear my hair because all of my favorite Barbies sported a ponytail with bangs but because it was a simple hairstyle that I could most of what I wanted to do in. A very active hairstyle. I also won't gloss over the fact that my outfit, including my shirt being Barbie's signature hot pink, passed my fashion test of asking myself "would Miss Piggy or Barbie where this?" If one of them would then I figure I can too. But I do want to say that looking or dressing like Barbie is not what I mean when I say that she influenced who I am as an adult (I'm a fairly rational adult, I know that humans don't actually look like that and was never upset that I didn't look like that. Honestly I was more upset to learn that becoming a skydiver was more complicated than buying the right accessories.). What I mean is that Barbie was allowed to be more than one kind of thing and therefore I was as well and that has carried into my adulthood and into a lot of things I do.
You see, I remember being a kid and watching cartoons and movies and playing with my friends and in all of those situations girls were put into boxes. You could be sporty and a "tomboy" or you could be "girly." The smart girl is always just the smart girl and the tough strong girl never has anything to do with anything feminine. But Barbie was different. Barbie was a back country hiker who hiked dangerous peaks with her sparkly pink backpack. The Barbies I owned and loved most did things that I was already interested in, and she did them with genuine femininity, even when things were considered "boy territory." That's the thing about Barbie. Her ad campaign for a long time was "I can be anything" but her message was "I can be more than one thing." That is the part that I strive for as an adult and that I launched this website to show. Women and girls get to be more than one kind of thing. I like to dance and my favorite color is pink, my house is decorated with fairy lights and I spend a lot of time thinking about what is in style these days. I also LOVE skydiving and backpacking and having conversations about science and history. I get to be more than one kind of thing and I think that is the most important thing we can be teaching young girls.
You will never fit inside of one box because those boxes fit inside of you.
I have a lot more that I can say about Barbie. About how she is my favorite feminist icon. About how she was originally created because a mother saw that her daughter did not have toy options that allowed her to envision herself as anything other than a caregiver. I can talk FOR DAYS about how Barbie went to the moon four years before Neil Armstrong did and almost 20 years before there was a woman in space. I can talk about positive female relationships, Barbie has dozens of female friends who are always shown supporting each other. I can talk all day on this subject but the fact that Barbie was allowed to fit whatever box she, or the girl holding that Barbie, wanted is something that I have carried into adulthood and how I see myself. So I get a little defensive about Barbie and I will fight you.
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