Comments on: Barbie

By: Californio

Californio — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 22:13:01 +0000

Certainly, four-year olds really should not be labelling themselves as fat. Sadly, many of them, well, are fat. Boys too. I think it is too much time in front of the television, or sitting in the car being driven everywhere. Couple that with harried parents feeding these kids on the road with drive-through fast food and there it is. Certain pejorative terms are common weapons used by kids, fat being one of the more popular. Her supportive aunt will help that kid more than my screed against Barbie.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:28:49 +0000

I hasten to add that it’s certainly pure conjecture on my part too. I just do tend to think that little drip-drip things like that have an effect, and that we brush them off and assume they don’t ‘really’ make any difference, too quickly or easily.

By: harry

harry — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:44:56 +0000

I’ve been thinking it over, and Ophelia could be right. Here’s how. Barbie does no damage in a certain kind of environment; one in which there are relatively few other similar phenomena, or one in which girls are being damaged in other ways by quite other kinds of phenomena. So in the 50s and 60s they are damaged by other things, and in the 70’s there aren’t enough other reinforcing influences for her to do any harm. Then, in the eighties, the threshold of other reinforcing influences is reached and suddenly she becomes a contributor to the harm. Obviously, pure conjecture, but its a thought..

By: rosalind

rosalind — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 03:44:23 +0000

See, I think Katie’s post supports Harry’s argument, that Barbie is an epiphenomenon. Because Barbies have been around for a while, but 4-year-old girls thinking of themselves as fat is a more recent phenomenon, surely. Right? I just can’t go on if I believe there’s a longstanding tradition of 4-year-old girls thinking they’re fat. I think Barbie’s just one of many expressions of the female-body-scrutinizing media assault that’s our current reality. I’m another who played with Barbies when I was little and I don’t think I was too damaged. The “ethnic” Barbies make me sort of sad, but that’s a whole ‘nother thread.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 00:26:59 +0000

There, see? That’s how.

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 20:43:47 +0000

Here’s damaging (or at least, kinda upsetting) for you. My sister finally put her foot down about Barbie because my 4-year-old niece, who had been Barbie-obsessed, started saying that she herself was ugly and fat (she’s the most beautiful 4-year-old you’ve EVER seen, in my completely unbiased adoring Auntie’s opinion, with perfect 4-year-old proportions) because she didn’t look like Barbie.

By: wtb

wtb — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 20:32:06 +0000

I’ve never seen male hostility towards Barbie. Frustration and disappointment, perhaps, but not hostility. I could never understand the view that Barbie teaches girls a distorted conception of physical beauty when Barbie herself is so disappointingly unlike a real woman. Perhaps it would help to advance the cause of feminism if we men made it clear how let down we felt the first time we saw Barbie en dishabille.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 19:51:18 +0000

I can’t buy Barbie as hypersexualizing children. For one thing, Barbie is well over 50 years old, and 12 year olds weren’t nearly as sexualized when I was 12 (30 years ago) as they are today. I can understand hating barbie because it’s expensive & fragile, but the feminist critique has always left me scratching my head.

By: Ab_Normal

Ab_Normal — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:55:58 +0000

emjaybee: “in-house acting troupe” is a good description of how my daughter plays with her toys. Wish I’d thought of it. :)

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:50:14 +0000

Exactly. That’s the phrase I was looking for – ‘an in-house acting troupe.’ There could be a good popular culture or ludic history or something monograph there – doll play as pseudo-maternity versus doll play as theatre or story-telling or playwrighting or directing or all those.

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:37:16 +0000

I loved Barbie as a kid, but I played with her the same way I played with my stuffed animals, baby dolls, and Breyer horse collection; as an in-house acting troupe for stories I made up. I wish I remembered those stories now, but I’m pretty sure they involved space, queens, witches, flying, and magic of different sorts. Not just dressing up for the fashion show or whatever. I think that’s why some women aren’t hostile; they remember Barbie in those terms, not as a tool of the sexist establishment. Actually I saw these dolls in the stores at Christmas http://www.flavas.com/comingsoon/ and I find them intriguing, because there’s such a variety of skin tones and face shapes and the body types seem a little more realistic. I would have liked them as a kid, and probably wouldn’t mind getting them for my daughter if I had one.

By: harry

harry — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:25:30 +0000

That’s the nicest thing I’ve eveer heard about Britney. Daniel, you were joking right? (though, as I say, I don’t feel any hostility). Ophelia, that’s a typical case of me thinking I’d asked a question that I hadn’t. But my observation is that people on this site don’t always restrict themselves to answering the question asked. I agree with you, too, about the premature sexualisation of children. But I also accept that children are sexual. But its not, exactly, Keith, that adolescents and adults are more sexual, its that childhood sexuality is somehow different in kind. I resent (as Ophelia seems to) corporate efforts to shape children’s sexuality in the image of adult sexuality, and I resent it even more because I know that it does not flow from any view about what might be good for the children, solely from a profit motive. Of course, they are not solely to blame—adults who play into it, buy the stuff, etc. collude. But the corporate interests here are despicable. All that said, Barbie doesn’t seem play into this the same way that, say, Britney does. She (Barbie) is remarkable partly because she seems so weirdly asexual, despite all the clothes, the shape, etc.

By: Dan the Man

Dan the Man — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:40:55 +0000

>Why the hostility to Britney? Haven’t you heard? The NRA has blacklisted Britney. “What do Britney Spears, the United Methodist Church, the St. Louis Rams and Hallmark Cards have in common? They’re among the hundreds of celebrities, organizations and companies on the National Rifle Association’s roster of entities that it considers hostile to gun-ownership rights.”

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:28:52 +0000

Sure. Thinking Barbie causes harm is one thing, but the question of what if anything to do about that is quite another. I stuck to the first half and ignored the second, because It All Depends, and I Don’t Know. It’s much like the hijab issue, as a matter of fact. I do think the hijab does a lot of harm, but it doesn’t follow from that that I’m confident I know what to do about it. I’m not. (Mind you. Having said that – I also think there is something to be said for not worrying too much about suffering socially. People who are misfits as children often go on to great things, while their more conformist peers go on to what conformists go on to. Of course, misfits may also go on to be Unabombers, so it’s all rather tricky.)

By: carla

carla — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:41:16 +0000

My mom restricted television (and required extensive chores, and restricted soda and sugared cereals . . .), but disallowing Barbie wouldn’t have occurred to her (I’m 45). Between us, my sister and I had about 20 of them (some of which DID have articulated joints, btw; Alan-with-the-bendy knees was one)—Barbie, and Midge, and Francie, and Skipper, and Alan, and Ken, and I’m blanking on a few other names. In any case, we used them as 3D figures in stories/adventures we were telling, not so much for the dress-up-and-pose thing (ick). And my grandmother made a bunch of clothes for them, and even at that age my sister and I knew that we didn’t have a lot of money, so buying the clothes & accessories wasn’t an option. And maybe 12 years ago there was a play in Chicago, “Barbie, The Fantasies” that included vignettes (one memorable one was titled something like “Barbie the Dyke Goes to the Board Meeting” and included GI Joe as a character) interspersed with M/WOTS interviews about Barbies. I was amused at the number of men who confessed to mutilating their sisters’ Barbies.