Choosing Barbie
This is something a little different for me--it's an essay I wrote a few years ago, when the kids were younger.
As an update, I can happily add that, while my younger daughter continues to be somewhat of a princessy girly-girl when the mood strikes, she has never been into Barbie.
Choosing Barbie
April 22, 2005
Her arrival, I suppose, was inevitable. For five years we had purposely avoided her company, sometimes even by making a quick u-turn in a store aisle. But now, among the more welcome guests at Allison’s party, like Clifford and Dora, here she was: vacant eyes, frozen smile, and impossible body. Barbie had arrived.
Up until this point, I had been very proud that Allison had neither asked for, nor received, Barbie or any of her accoutrements. From what I saw of Allison’s peers, this made Allison a rarity. And I had even used my great Preschooler’s Parent Power of Persuasion to get Allison to recite that “Barbie is yucky.” This is a power that I use sparingly; in recent months, we have employed it only to convince our daughter that a certain world leader is actually Mr. Stupidhead.
But parental authority only extends so far, and Barbie had arrived as a birthday present. She was Halloween Barbie, with white hair and a long, glow-in-the-dark dress. This is as goth as Barbie gets.
Allison was delighted. That evening, she carefully combed Barbie’s hair and considered sleeping with her. But then she decided that she’d rather put her in a place of honor, high atop her dresser, where her dress could shine forth in all its glory after the lights went out.
I, on the other hand, was devastated. This was it, I thought. She’s had a taste of Barbie, and now all my parental warnings will go unheeded and Allison will be hooked. We would soon be awash in pink plastic and tiny little shoes that hurt like hell when you accidentally step on one that’s hidden in the carpet.
Eventually, I calmed down. And then I began to ask myself why I have such a Barbie aversion.
It’s not that I’m a fanatic about commercialism. We do Disney. We buy Happy Meals. Spongebob is our friend.
I’m not a toy fascist in general. I do tend to buy my children toys that are creative or educational, but I make exceptions now and then. And although I am not happy about kids playing with faux weapons, I have purchased a plastic sword and dagger set so that a pirate ensemble would be complete.
It’s not that I’m opposed to dolls, even little plastic ones. In fact, facing a 400 mile car trip to visit grandparents right after Allison turned three, I personally bought her a Polly Pocket set, complete with several itsy outfits, hoping it might keep her busy for at least a few of those miles (it turns out, however, that Polly Pocket outfits are impossible for either three-year-olds or their parents to put on without having tantrums).
And it’s not even that I’m hostile toward all things girly. When Allison requested glittery, blueberry-scented makeup, and when she wanted to be a fairy princess for Halloween, I cheerfully acquiesced.
Maybe I should even welcome Barbie. After all, she’s one of only a small handful of female toy celebrities. Dora gets really annoying after a while (“I’m a map, I’m a map, I’m a map, I’m a map…..”), and the Disney princess pantheon is hardly much of an improvement over Barbie.
But I just can’t stomach Barbie. To me, Barbie is the quintessence of demeaning female stereotypes. Mattel may occasionally bend to criticism by giving Barbie a job as, say, a veterinarian. But even Pet Doctor Barbie wears Capri pants and a navel-baring t-shirt. When it comes down to it, Barbie is about very little other than clothes and hair and shopping. In fact, Barbie’s web pages are part of Mattel’s pink-heavy “Everything Girl” website, but a quick perusal demonstrates that to Mattel, clothes, makeup, hairstyling, shopping, and stuffed animals constitute Everything important about Girls.
So fine, Barbie is sexist. Big news. I don’t have to play with her. Why does it bother me so much if my daughter does? Do I believe that Barbie will single-handedly eradicate years of my messages to Allison that girls are as good as boys, and that she can be anything she wants, do anything she dreams?
And wait. What if what she dreams of is playing with Barbie?
I feel scorn for those parents who insist that their sons act like “real” men, which generally seems to involve contact sports, engines, or both. If I insist that my daughter shun Barbie, I am no better than those parents, forcing my child to meet my own narrow definition of gender.
As a child, I was never interested in Barbie and, in fact, wasn’t much into dolls in general-although I did play with “action figures.” As an adult, I have chosen a male-dominated profession. My husband is as likely as I am to change a diaper or do the laundry or wash the dishes. And I give thanks to the generations of women before me who made it possible for me to live this kind of life. Still, sometimes I feel like putting on a skirt and nylons and makeup, and I’ve been known to buy a fashion magazine or watch a chick flick. I need to let my daughter express her femininity in her own way, just as I am able to express mine in my own way.
Interestingly, the particular Barbie in question was given to Allison by one of her boy friends. As I watched him help her unwrap the gift, it became clear that he had chosen the Barbie for the same reason that most 5-year-olds choose gifts: because he thought it was really cool. I’m not sure whether he actually owns his own Barbie. But I do know that his mother, who was present at the birthday party, smiled fondly at his Barbie enthusiasm, and later let him borrow her high heels to complete the witch costume he wore to his own birthday party. If his mother can be happy with his zeal for Barbie, I should be happy with Allison’s.
I remember one of my graduate school professors telling how aghast she was that her gender-neutrally-named daughter insisted on wearing frilly pink dresses. I think on some level she felt, and I feel, that if our girls are too femme, we have failed as proper feminists. Yet, pressed to give my own personal definition of feminism, I would have to say that to me in large part it means that females should have the freedom to make their own choices about their lives and destinies. And if that means that they choose to be girly girls, or to play with fashion dolls, I should respect those choices as well.
To be honest, though, Barbie still gives me the willies.
I had congratulated myself for not dissing Allison’s Barbie in front of Allison, but after placing Barbie so lovingly atop her dresser, Allison has not yet taken her down again. In the passing months, Barbie has been obscured by some Spiderman paraphernalia and a plastic figurine that I think is a Yugioh character. And this pleases me. In fact, I find myself delighted that Allison prefers books and Legos to dolls, and that she’s much more likely to choose a movie featuring monsters to one featuring princesses.
But Allison has a 2-year-old sister. And Quinn favors the colors purple and pink, loves to dress up in frilly clothes, spends long periods of time feeding dolls or wheeling them around in toy strollers. One of her first words was “shoe,” and she now traipses around the house in my strappy sandals whenever she gets the chance. She can be cajoled out of a tantrum by a promise to go shopping. Quinn already recognizes Elmo, Buzz, and all four Wiggles; sooner or later, she’s going to meet Barbie, too.
When she does, will I be woman enough to let her choose Barbie?