Barbie is “#Unapologetic” for Empire

April 3, 2014 by 9 Comments

Recently, Barbie caused quite a stir when she posed (rather, was posed) for the cover of Sports Illustrated. In a feature article, she “speaks” about her experiences, claiming,

“I, for one, am honored to join the legendary swimsuit models. The word “model,” like the word “Barbie®,” is often dismissed as a poseable plaything with nothing to say. And yet, those featured are women who have broken barriers, established empires, built brands, branched out into careers as varied as authors, entrepreneurs and philanthropists. They are all great examples of confident and competent women.”

Those are mighty words for a doll. Barbie makes sure to place the “registered trademark” image next to her name as she goes on to utilize hashtags in telling women not to apologize for controlling empires. What’s wrong with this picture? Like the women who shaped her, Barbie lacks an understanding of class as it operates globally and locally. Having women in positions of corporate leadership is not the same as advancing gender equality worldwide.  Atop her throne of capitalist consumerism, Barbie believes that women and girls are really only discriminated against for being too girly, too pretty, or loving fashion too much. Her advice? “Be free to launch a career in a swimsuit, lead a company while gorgeous, or wear pink to an interview at MIT.” In saying so, Barbie forces girls and women into the boxes she speaks so strongly against.

I don’t think that anyone has ever “dismissed” anything that Barbie has said or done. Rather, I am hyperaware of the ways in which her plastic persona both directly and indirectly conveys messages about normative female social roles to those who purchase and play with her. And I’m not the only one. Earlier this week, the Guardian conducted a study of young girls who played with Barbies, and found that  “After only five minutes of playing with Barbie, girls in our sample said that boys could do more jobs in the future than they could. Girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head, on the other hand, responded that they could do about the same number of jobs as boys someday.” According to the study, Barbie further socializes girls to believe that they can only occupy limited, gendered roles.

When Teen Talk Barbie debuted in 1992, the first words out of her mouth were, “Math class is tough!” The first ever talking Barbie, a doll who had for years prided herself on the motto “We girls can do anything,” chooses to complain about math? Yes, math is tough. But rather than construct a narrative about doing homework, working hard, or actually doing math, Barbie discourages girls from pursuing it.

Perhaps this is why it wasn’t until 2010 that Barbie became a computer engineer. The doll, designed in collaboration with the Society of Women Engineers, wears neon pink glasses, a neon pink Bluetooth headset, a neon pink watch, and carries a neon pink smartphone and a neon pink computer. Her shirt, in neon green, pink, and blue, has a picture of a computer and some binary code, illustrating that even when Barbie branches out into STEM fields, she is still bound to ridiculous, gendered constraints. In an effort to incorporate as much pink as possible into her wardrobe, Barbie must literally wear the image of a computer on her shirt to convey that she is a computer engineer.

While the AAUW lauds the creation of this doll, quantitative representations in STEM fields are not enough. I want to see a world in which Barbie not only represents different career possibilities, but represents them accurately. Mattel cannot overlook the problems of its past by continuing to send mixed messages in the future. Today’s Barbie adopts the slogan “Be who you wanna be!” What she really says, is ‘Be who you wanna be, as long as you’re considered to be conventionally attractive, you wear lots of pink, and are committed to amassing a fortune with a multimedia empire.” And frankly, that’s just not good enough.

 

(Photo Credit: SSPL / Getty Images / The Guardian)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

Why wasn’t Barbie a domestic worker? Who cares?

December 24, 2013 by 25 Comments

 


Following her creation in 1959, Barbie leapt from toy store shelves into the hearts and minds of children all over the world.  Her position as an influential figure in American popular culture is undeniable, and her reach has been as expansive and varied as her résumé.  Despite holding a plethora of positions from doctor to rock star to astronaut, Barbie has never been a domestic worker. While domestic work may not have been one of the careers Mattel had envisioned girls dreaming of when Barbie began using her motto “We girls can do anything,” the company eventually did release a doll that was equipped for domestic work, but it was not marketed as such.

Mattel claims that the 1991 Jamaican Barbie wears “a costume native to her homeland”. As scholar Ann Ducille points out, `Jamaican Barbie’ is actually wearing a maid’s uniform, thereby presenting a deeply troubling caricature of  both Jamaica and domestic labor. Clearly there are racist implications behind the fact that domestic work is acceptable for this ethnic other, but not for Barbie herself to have as a career. Jamaican Barbie is the only doll to be depicted as a domestic worker, but that word does not appear in the doll’s name or official description. If it had, that would have spelled out even more troubling consequences for the ways in which Mattel depicts not only domestic work and people of color, but entire countries. Moreover, in overlooking the doll’s actual depiction as a domestic worker, Mattel contributes to the conventional wisdom of domestic workers as an invisible and silent workforce.

The world around us shapes our perceptions of domestic work and domestic workers. The  narrative of domestic work being devalued persists because value and prestige are conflated, suggesting that because domestic work is not prestigious, it is not valuable and vice versa. Barbie projects a specific vision of American upward mobility, aspiration and imagination, and domestic work does not fit the profile of the extravagant and extraordinary careers in which Barbie has dabbled over the years. The idea that domestic work is somehow inferior or less important benefits the State’s capitalist machinery that relies on the extraction of surplus value from low-wage and unwaged labor. In the current neoliberal political moment, the precarization and casualization of labor has proven a formidable obstacle in bringing about any consistency in the way domestic work is regulated, legislated, and salaried.

Add to this the lack of `universal understanding’ of what a domestic worker is or looks like. Ideas surrounding workers’ attitudes, abilities, and obligations are as varied as the workers themselves. While Mattel has a history of capitalizing on difference and constructing a form of multiculturalism that is palatable to consumers, it would be impossible to dress and market a domestic worker Barbie in a way that is accurate and respectful. Mattel would be hard-pressed to convey the nuance and variety in the forms of domestic work. Would consumers buy Childcare Barbie? Eldercare Barbie? Cleaning and Maintenance Barbie? Home Healthcare Worker Barbie?

We need to consider domestic workers not just as consumers, but also as agents who deserve more than to be held to Barbie’s standards of visibility and success. If having an official Barbie doll career outfit really mattered to domestic workers, wouldn’t they have asked for one by now? For domestic workers, life is neither plastic nor fantastic. They face a multitude of challenges with very real impacts on their everyday lives, ranging from lack of legal protection to separation from their families, to living with undocumented immigration status to physical and sexual abuse, and much more. In this context, Barbie would barely register as a priority.

(Photo Credit: The Barbie Collection)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , ,
блекспрут зеркало блекспрут зеркало блекспрут ссылкаблекспрут ссылка blacksprut blacksprut