Barbiecon the Grift and the Glamour
Feminists and Barbie have never sat well together. The rise of pink by the gendered Toy industry kept me and others from the color for years. It was not until the Women’s March in 2017 and the Signature Pink Pussy Hats that many of us took back the color pink.
The disturbing fashion trend of #barbiecore, hot pink on the fashion runways, and the hailing of Barbie as a model of feminine “empowerment?’ has me gagging.
Once upon a time, women questioned the standards set by the Barbie generation and asked for more, and better.
In the 2018 Hulu documentary, “Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie,” Gloria Steinem said, “ I am so grateful I didn’t grow up with Barbie. Barbie is everything we didn’t want to be and were told to be.”
Thank you Katie Branch for the astute Barbie run down in Vogue, How America’s Favorite Doll Created A Beauty Complex.
In a time when we truly have been set back and need to fight for our rights to bodily autonomy, the American culture has dangled her candy-coated doll in front of our faces to remind us who they expect us to be.
The latest Trojan horse gifted to American Princesses is the Barbie movie, setting the marketing stage with her fashion and celebrity entourage in the #barbiecore trend.
Have you taken the bait?
In the last decade, there have been multiple articles written by women trying to recast Barbie as a feminist icon.
True, Whyte Barbie’s clothes, Corvette, Dreamhouse, and career iterations gave her access to a life that girls dreamed of. Similarly, endless Hallmark and Disney classics pitch the Whyte Princess tropes. These fantasies become dreams and paradigms for identity. To be clear it is a paradigm of the Whyte, rich and famous. My whole life has been a gender study and this is 101.
18-inch waists and breasts in the shape of torpedoes belong to my longsuffering pre-liberated generation. Barbie’s long golden hair like Rapunzel’s dangles like nylon silk, a petroleum by-product, and gallons of toxic hair bleach and dye.
Fashion, the darling of capitalism offers women glamour for a price. The original meaning of the word glamour is enchantment. It is an illusion a magic spell. Funny how many women marchers were branded witches. Projection, the tool of the patriarchal narcissists’ are hard at work.
Ivanka Trump the most recent aspirational political Barbie; friends with Russian oligarchs, fashion brand owner, and daughter and advisor to the former disaster of a President clearly followed the Barbie book of manners. Many of us were wise enough to reject the complicity of her reign.
As an Asian American woman, Barbie was never made for girls like me; literally and figuratively. Black Pink and mutations of KPop stars emulate Barbie with their American capitalist Stockholm syndrome. Stars like Beyonce dye their hair gold and sport a hot pink Barbiecore, but with all their money and fame they will always be the Black Barbie or the exotic Asian Barbie, and I will always be; not Barbie. Overcoming the confines of those standards took work and I have no interest in going back.
In the movie, “The Devil Wears Prada,” Meryl Streep’s character lectures Anne Hathaway on the significance and power of the high fashion world. Hathaway plays, Andy, the dowdy academic feminist whose dreams of becoming a writer of substance is prior to her fashion conversion, thwarted by the opportunity to become a sycophant to the high priestess, i.e. Miranda Priestly. Miranda explains how the color choice of a mere accessory like a cerulean belt, (which looks really more turquoise than cerulean) trickles down from the Mount Olympus of fashion to the cheap reproductions for the masses. Lessons in the hierarchy, standards, color, and power all in one pompous lecture; how divine. Full disclosure I am a sucker for the rigor and execution of fashion, the socioeconomic and patriarchal expense; not so much. As an artist, craft and commerce are perpetually sleeping in separate beds.
Rebrand Barbie if you want. Paint pink on everything you want to call female empowerment and laugh as the women around you jump into their boxes with cellophane windows. I am sure you will find the perfect outfit and shoes to die for.
Pretending 1+1=3 is on trend these days.
I will keep my hot pink boxcutter close by if you need me, and I promise, I won’t bite.
