I want Barbie’s wardrobe. She has the most adorable clothes. They always fit her to a T, most of them have Velcro closures for the hook-and-eye challenged, and most fashion packs come with coordinating accessories, shoes molded to fit her feet and a hairbrush. Imagine: a hairbrush that matches every outfit you own? It’s a little too much to handle, I think.
Yes, I would love a wardrobe like that. So many options, so much fashion, so much hot pink! I’ve always wanted her wardrobe, too. Even back in the ’80s when I first met the blonde bombshell, and she had large frizzy, crimped hair, purple and blue eye shadow up to her eyebrows and glittery leggings with an oversized T-shirt. I, too, strived to be of such fashionable perfection and to this day have lapses in which I actually venture into public wearing blue eye shadow.
But despite my longing for her fashions, I never once wanted to be Barbie.
For starters, take a look at Ken. Now there’s a man who has problems. Not to state the obvious, but he has no penis. He just has sculpted flesh-colored underwear lines and not even a bulge between his rubbery legs. Despite his fashion-sense, and always perfectly-styled plastic hair, he was no real man.
Barbie herself never appealed to me as someone or something I ever wanted to be. There has been much debate for many years, especially the recent ones, over the message Barbie sends to girls. Many people argue that she promotes the image of a fashionable, skinny, well-endowed, long-haired blonde woman meant to wear clothes and take care of a fuchsia-colored dream home until Ken came home from work. Basically, a lot of people feel that Barbie perpetuates a stereotype, a particular body image girls are supposed to succumb to.
I played with Barbies for many years – probably more than most girls. But in all those years, I never once felt like I should be Barbie; like I should strive to look like her.
Barbie is a doll! I always knew that. She was plastic! I didn’t want to be plastic and stiff like her. And besides that, it’s pretty simple to look at a Barbie doll, then look at a real woman, even a beautiful skinny woman, and note that there are several big differences.
It has been established by many of Barbie’s critics that, were she a real person, her limbs would be completely out-of-proportion to her body.
True, but maybe that’s why her clothes fit her so much better than our clothes fit us. Additionally, Barbie may have particularly large and perky breasts but she doesn’t have any nipples. Or a vagina, for that matter. Down below, she, like Ken, is just a plastic mold devoid of any sexuality. Barbie, as manufactured by Mattel, was not meant for sex or womanhood – she was meant to wear clothes. That’s why she’s in that category of toys known as “fashion dolls.”
Her feet are weird, too. It’s true, her shoes are molded to perfectly fit her feet. But her feet are molded so that the only shoe that really fits her is a heel. Have you ever worn a heel? They make your legs look great, but they are killer on your feet. You can only wear them for so long without losing the circulation in your toes. Barbie, the poor plastic girl, must always have sore feet.
Barbie is perfectly harmless, although her shoes do pose a choking hazard to children under the age of 3. She’s not walking around telling girls to “get skinny, get big boobs, live in a hot pink house!” If anything, Barbie tells girls that they can look great and still have the career of their dreams. They don’t have to, but if they want to wear a hot pink mini skirt and a coordinating baby doll tee under their doctor’s lab coat, they can. Just like Barbie.
I never wanted to be Barbie. I never felt compelled to have her figure, or her hair, or her house. I never felt compelled to have her wardrobe, either, for that matter. Of course, some girls might decide that they do want to look like Barbie, but they will choose to do so. Barbie cannot make them. Likewise, she never made me want her wardrobe. I just do.