Several years ago, I wrote a post about how I thought Barbie hadn't been bad for me. Sure, I said, I agree with criticism of the dolls' creepy blonde, blue-eyed, big-boobed uniformity. But, I wrote, for me the alternative gendered toy was baby-dolls. And at least Barbie was an adult who allowed me to play-act future roles for myself beyond motherhood.
Suffice to say, I would not write it this way if I were to set out to blog about Barbie today. (For better or worse, that's the nature of blogging. Your snap-shot opinions live on forever.) Even thought I didn't endorse Barbie in that post, and I said I understood that this toy is a truly destructive thing for most women, I didn't stop to fully consider -- or didn't really grasp -- the ways in which the "Barbie look" affected other young girls. (I told myself, this is a post about my personal experience. For me personally, Barbie wasn't so bad.)
I haven't thought about the post much since I published it. That is, until I clicked a link from JJP to this post Danielle Belton wrote at her blog, The Black Snob:
Along time ago at a kitchen table in an all-black, middle/working class neighborhood in St. Louis, Mo.'s North County a young Danielle Belton, age five, loved to draw and color more than anything in the world. My older sister, aka "Big Sis, bka Denise, didn't like to color, so I inherited all the coloring books she never used.I could draw for hours and color for hours, but all I drew and colored were white people.
GO read her entire post. Her experience -- not mine -- is the baseline by which Barbie dolls (and their ilk) should be judged. And she provides a really powerful lens into a lot of the discussion around Sasha and Malia Obama.
Also, if you haven't already, go watch A Girl Like Me.
UPDATE: Veronica also has a good post on this subject.
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I actually think everyone's experience is equally valid.
I agree. I don't think there's anything wrong with exploring Barbie's effect on yourself and concluding that it didn't have any negative ones as long as you're not further concluding, "And therefore, it also didn't have negative effects on everybody else." I didn't get that vibe from Ann's original blog.
All of our personal stories are going to be different, I'm not sure why one person's experience should be the baseline while someone else's is completely excluded. There is value in listening to these differences.
I believe Ann's point is that the harmful potential of a product (Barbies, in this case) should be determined by looking at the experience of those who the product harms.
In other words, the potential of a gun to do damage should be judged by the damage done to the person hit by the bullet, not necessarily the person down the block.
It's pretty clear to me that Ann's not saying her experience doesn't matter or should be "completely excluded", but that she dodged the bullet by chance of birth. Therefore, one shouldn't conclude that Barbie is a fine doll to dominate the market just because Ann doesn't have any lasting self-image problems stemming from Barbies.
Are guys really taking such strong offense at Ann's perspective? I mean, really, look at what you're saying... you say, on one hand, that "everyone's experience is equally valid" but then deny Ann the opportunity to have an evolving point of view. Derrrrrr...
I denied Ann nothing, and I'm not offended or upset by what she said. I was just making an observation and stating my own opinion. I also think that the ‘harm’ done by these types of dolls isn’t necessarily limited to non-white girls. Based on Barbie’s proportions alone (hair and eye color excluded) one could argue that it has affected white girls just as much since there seems to be a higher incidence of eating disordered behavior among them. Just like with anything, some will be negatively impacted and others won’t.
Who's denying her anything? My point was that since she DIDN'T originally conclude, in your words, "that Barbie is a fine doll to dominate the market just because Ann doesn't have any lasting self-image problems stemming from Barbies" there is no need to apologize for examining its effects on herself and not finding any. In considering her own experiences before, she wasn't ignoring others', and she can point out other peoples' experiences now without it contradicting her first post.
I'm not really sure where you're getting "strong offense" from in my post.
I experienced a lot of rage as a kid because of the Barbie-effect in popular culture. Not only were heroine's always blonde, but the bad guys always seemed to have black hair. She-Ra vs. Catra, Rainbow Brite vs. Murky Dismal, Smurfette vs. Gargamel, Lady Lovely Locks vs. Duchess Ravenwaves. And no, I'm not making the last one up.
I defaced my She-Ra books and cut my Barbies' hair off. Just having black hair and dark eyes made me feel like an outsider. I can't imagine how bad it must be for children with darker skin.
same here.
This reminds me when I was a kid - not really young, I think I was about 10 or so - and I won a halloween coloring contest at our local drug store. The reason blew my mind: I had colored one of the kids in the scene of trick-or-treaters black and not all white. I had done this because the features of this person seemed like those of a 'black' person. Prolly not a good reason - I mean in my kid mind I had obviously internalized what black people we 'supposed' to look like. But I was kinda shocked that all the other entrants had colored *everyone* white. And yeah, I live in a place where there are very, very few black people, but still.
Anyway... just ruminating...
I have a seven year old daughter and the role of Danielle's father in helping her to realize her own beauty really got me where I live. I'm tearing up again just thinking about it. As Danielle says, it's a struggle from birth for parents of kids of color to provide and affirm positive values and images of beauty for their kids. I know most parenting messaging is based on fear: advertisers and magazines trying to scare parents into believing we are hopelessly ruining our kids' lives if we don't buy their junk or send our kids to their schools or enroll them in their day camps, etc. I think I'm pretty good at resisting most of that blather, but I feel the most vulnerable and unprepared at finding and providing and reinforcing experiences and images for my daughter that will help her recognize and accept how beautiful and smart she is. Being male, I didn't have those particular challenges growing up. And being a single dad, it's a greater challenge for my daughter to have ready access to someone who has shared that experience.
Enough self-pity. I loved this video that one of the commenters at JJP linked. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2Ap3DyvLg
The physical appearance of Barbie is what troubles me the most from my childhood memories. My feminist mother was horrified when my grandmother gave me my first Barbie at the age of five... I was delighted because it meant I would now fit in with my friends (my street was dominated by families of girls). However, the memories that troubles me the most is the one of when my other grandmother gave me a black Barbie for Christmas--- I remember opening the package and feeling disappointed. I politely thanked my grandmother, but still wanted the blonde Barbie in my heart. My friends and family were all diverse; why did I want a white Barbie so much?
Anyway, as a I grew older, I loved my black Barbie as much as the others. However, I'm still deeply troubled by that reaction of disappointment.
On another note, did anyone else ever treat their 'Ken' dolls terribly? Ours were always missing legs, and heads, wearing diapers, and constantly being snubbed and treated poorly by our Barbies...
I can definitely see how younger-Ann's perspective that Barbie was less pernicious in its stereotypes than baby dolls. In fact, there was a strain of scholarly thought about this several years back: while some feminists denounced Barbie as the usual hyper-sexualized, hyper-thin Euro ideal, others said Barbie LIBERATED them from the reproductive tropes of old. After all, they said, her body was what they felt was "unmaternal" (hard, firm, upthrust breasts) and she was pictured in doctor's coats and various careers ("math is hard!" talking Barbie notwithstanding).
I loved Barbie as a child. I also loved the (infinitely better for me) hundreds of young adult books featuring only European-ancestry protagonists. And I am still grateful for the latter, because they fueled my imagination and made me into a writer and a thinker.
Up until age 14 or 15, all of my human doodles and drawings were European in phenotype. If someone would have suggested to me that I could draw people without straight hair, without heavily-folded eyes, without fair skin, I would have stared at them as if they were an alien. After all, I had never seen any of the latter reflected on my TV, in my coloring books, in my cartoons, in my Barbies and dolls. I drew what I had been trained to love, and what I hd been trained in was the European.
Even though I wrote stories beginning at the age of 7 or 8, I literally could not bring myself to make even one non-European (whether my ethnicity or Hispanic, Arab, East Asian, what have you). It didn't even occur to me that someone like me, with immigrant parents, who spoke a different language at home, who never looked like the faces on the covers of my books, could possibly be the "hero/heroine" of a story. It was inconceivable to me.
It took me all the way until I had graduated undergrad--till I was 21 years old--before I could force myself to create a fictional character that was non-European in ethnicity (even though I had already created gay, plus-sized, and other diverse characters). And even then, I spent a few years keeping them secondary characters, and ethnicities that I felt were more "relatable" to European-American society (e.g. Hispanic and Black American)than my own. It was extraordinarily difficult; I would pick up the pen and then put it down, stymied.
It was not until I was 25 years old that I was able to finally write a protagonist who was of my own background, and even then, it was like wandering in a foreign land: How do I make *this* experience--so peripheral to the "All-American" lifestyle--somehow front and center in an American story, when the American stories I was bred on featured people so different from me? Even now, I'm not sure I would ever attempt to have any of these particular works published (even though the literary market has become more receptive to "ethnic" female writers telling "their" stories. I find that enterprise propblematic as well, though).
During college, I gifted a Black American girl I babysat with a copy of the Nappy Hair Book and two faux-Barbies (a Black one and a redhead). She tossed the Black one aside and spent hours playing with the red-haired one. It felt like I was watching a movie of myself fifteen years earlier.
Blue eyed blond-haired dolls unearthed the feminist in me. When I was in elementary school I wanted to get a water baby (I forget what they are called, but they are rubber dolls filled with water so they are fleshy and squishy and awesome). I had three choices: 1. white, blond and blue eyed, 2. white, reddish hair and purple eyes (or at least purplish, nothing found in nature), and 3. black, brown eyed and brown hair. I picked option 3, because she had brown hair and brown eyes like me, I had more in common with her than my fellows with white skin.
I really appreciate the sentiments of this post by Ann and Danielle Belton's is great. I'm slightly uncomfortable with the following line: "Her experience -- not mine -- is the baseline by which Barbie dolls (and their ilk) should be judged." If this was said to mean that everyone who has felt unrepresented or offended by Barbie's status as a beauty standard make up the baseline by which Barbie should be judged, then I wholeheartedly agree. My kids each have a 50% chance of inheriting dwarfism from me, and I have a sneaking suspicion that whenever I decide to have them, the only dwarf dolls I'll ever be able to find for them will still be called Dopey, Sleepy, and Bashful.
The elevation of Barbie and other pretty dolls to the dictatorial status they enjoy perpetuates our culture of white dominance, razor-sharp gender lines, height consciousness, and the illusion of medical/genetic perfection, wherein scars and any disproportions are strictly out of view. I think anyone's experience of being hurt by this is valid.
I was never a fan of dolls, period, as a child. My obsession tended to be animals of various sorts, and I had a large collection of model horses and My Little Ponies which I played with instead. When I was not playing with GI Joes with my friends or something, that is.
Most dolls did not seem to have much in common with me anyways. Sure Barbie has a brunette friend, but why are all the other lines of dolls fronted by a blonde-haired blue-eyed "leader?" Growing up around some very diverse people I would also clue in, later in life, that most of these lines had a "token ethnic doll" who was usually black.
Recently I had the experience of working for a year in a toy store, and my specific area was the girl's section (the entire split of older boy's and girl's toys rankled me on its own, other than horses/ponies/littlest pet shop the toys I remember playing with in my childhood all seemed to come from the educational and boy's sections.) I had a brief period of working on days with customers, and explaining to a fair number of parents that the girl/boy divisions are just "suggestions" and it's perfectly okay that their son is interested in Littlest Pet Shop -- they're animals, and the least-gendered toys out of the entire girl's section really.
Most of the girl's toys made me mad. All of the cooking/food related toys (the other least-gendered part of the section) was in my area. Bratz, those dolls teaching girls about obsessing over hypersexualized fashion, actually seemed to have the best understanding of multiple ethnicities, despite still being fronted by yet another blonde-haired blue-eyed leader. And Barbie? Sure, she has careers, yet every single one of them seems to be linked with children somehow. This could have just been what my store kept in stock mind you, but it was very ridiculous. I think the only career playpack that didn't have Barbie with a kid was the "pet groomer" one. "Barbie Baby Doctor", "Barbie Baby Swimming Instructor", "Barbie Art Teacher" (for kids,) "Barbie Teacher" (for young kids of course,) "Barbie Cake Decorator" (she has a kid with her in this pack for some reason, her baby sister?) "Barbie Dance Instructor" (ballet, again with a young child as a pupil,) the list goes on in a similar vein.