The Plastic Feminism of Barbie

Mattel, the creators of Barbie, hated  Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” They found it offensive and damaging to their  brand, and they were kind of right. The song was about plastic surgeries and the  beauty standards that lead people to feel they needed to change their bodies, standards  which of course Barbie heavily reflected. But in 2009, Mattel made an attempt to salvage the  song by covering it with new, inoffensive lyrics. AQUA’S SONG: ♪ I’m a blonde  bimbo girl in a fantasy world ♪ MATTEL’S COVER:

♪ I’m a girl in  my world full of fashion and fun ♪ It wasn't meant to be frightening, regardless  of the effect, but the point was to take the controversial song and make it into  something inoffensive for their brand, make it fit their marketing of Barbie. Now with the release of the new Barbie film,  the song has been sampled by Nikki Minaj and Ice Spice. Any of Aqua’s original social  commentary has long been neutralised by Mattel. When you’ve got the cash, it's not so difficult  to subsume

criticism of your own company. You can see it in other media, such  as Black Mirror satirising streaming services and their exploitation of workers - this satire being of course available only on  the very company they seek to satirise. If you hate Netflix, subscribe to Netflix  for the best anti-Netflix content! So when Margot Robbie met with Mattel’s  CEO to discuss developing a Barbie movie, she was very blunt about the fact that  a lot of people f*cking hate Barbie. She said that the convers

ation around Barbie’s  controversies is going to happen either way, so…better to be involved in that conversation. And we all know the criticisms,  right? Barbie isn’t feminist enough, she’s too skinny, she’s bad  for self esteem, etc., etc. Well that’s where Greta Gerwig comes in,  famed director of Lady Bird and Little Women. Gerwig had managed to pull off a  careful balance with Little Women, giving it a feminist twist commenting on the  expectations for women to have a romantic ending, while

also… just going ahead and  giving us the romantic ending anyway. Women truly can have it all… as long as  they’re incredibly beautiful of course. Gerwig had her cake and ate it too, shattering the glass fourth wall for a self aware nod  to critics of Little Women’s ending. Could she do the same for Barbie, bringing the  franchise into the 21st century with careful nods to the sexism of the past while also appeasing  the pop culture feminist standards of the present? Gerwig’s Barbie stars Will

Farrell as a  wacky loveable villain, the CEO of Mattel: a man in charge of Barbie, trying to  capture her and put her in a box! Oh no! This meta commentary positions the Barbie  character as a victim of Mattel’s more problematic choices, as well as a victim of  the hatred and vitriol she receives from the women and girls of the world to whom it  is her life’s goal to bring happiness. It’s an interesting way of, kind of,  anthropomorphising the brand. You’re not criticising Mattel when you talk 

shit about Barbie, you’re being mean to poor little Barbie herself! Poor  Barbie, she never did anything wrong! Time Magazine did the same thing back in 2016  when the new “curvy” Barbie doll was released. "Now can we stop talking about my body?" As if Barbie herself had been a victim of some  sort of body shaming. Her thinness wasn’t a piece of plastic embodying societal expectations of  what women’s bodies should look like - rather she was just an innocent skinny woman whose body  was constan

tly under scrutiny by the public. Aren’t you tired of watching women like  Barbie twisting themselves into knots just to be liked? As the film states, if  all these misogynist standards for women are even put on a doll just representing  women… then, is there hope for any of us? If you hate Barbie, it's clearly just  because you hate women. If you hate Barbie, then maybe you are the real misogynist. That’ll be $10.99 please. ♪ I’m a Barbie girl ♪ The Barbie film opens with a send up of  2001: A

Space Odyssey where little girls smash their babydolls with the arrival of the  magnificent Barbie, a symbol of modernity, of progress! The age of the baby doll was  over, Barbie was the way of the future! And that’s fairly true to life, besides the  proportions and the smashing. Before Barbie, girls were expected to play pretty  exclusively with baby dolls, training from an early age for  their role as mother, as caregiver. But Barbie changed things, she was a new toy for  the modern girl, a fa

shion model embodying all of the aspirational qualities of the modern  young woman of the late 50s and early 60s. Barbie wasn’t a mum, she was a young woman with  a job, and with that job came money to spend! Her work as a fashion model  tied in with your play of her: you bought the doll which was cheap enough,  and then you had to buy all the different clothing sets for Barbie to model! Your  shopping was a part of the Barbie play! Repeatedly purchasing more Barbie products was  basically a nec

essity, shopping was built into the product, genius really - you kept those little  kids buying and buying, all for this one doll. And that’s what made Barbie the modern  woman - that she was a shopper, a consumer. She reflected the developing  teen culture of the 1950s, one with its own distinct language,  music, and clothing. After all, Barbie was only 19 years old! The youth of the  day had money and they were ready to spend it! What made Barbie the young woman of the modern  world wasn’t som

e noble feminist goal… it was her relationship to consumption. Indulgent  spending was the aspiration of the day and Barbie helped teach girls to associate  adulthood with carefree consumption. GIRL: I think I’d like… SECOND GIRL: …all of them! VERITY: But times have moved on yet again, and the role of the middle-class woman has  evolved, and so has Barbie’s. Obviously Barbie’s brand is no longer about just  being a young woman with money to spend! She’s no longer just a fashion model even;  Bar

bie can be anything! A doctor! An astronaut! A yoga instructor! That’s the feminism  of today: a woman who can have it all! Now you can help your little girl  develop her interest in STEM with the STEM Barbie doll! But you don’t wanna  just influence your kid with only one job, do you? Remember, girls can do anything!  Lots and lots and lots of anything! Today’s Barbie is so much more than  just a shopper. But if you want to really explore her big wide  world of female empowerment, you gotta spe

nd a few bucks. You purchase  Barbie’s identity. She is what she owns. BARBIE: I’ve got the clothes  from every career I’ve ever had! VERITY: We may not associate Barbie  with “fashion model” anymore, but she is a youtuber, and  she’s on instagram. If anything, Barbie is an influencer now. Basically the  2023 equivalent of the 1959 fashion model! In a way, she’s always been an influencer,  hasn’t she, that’s her main job. AD VOICEOVER: If you were a  fashion model like Barbie, you’d lead a diffe

rent life every day of the week. VERITY: But at least she’s always been a  responsible influencer, a feminist one even. As their website states, Barbie  went to the moon back in 1965, four years before real world men did! NIKKI: You went to the moon? BARBIE: You haven’t? VERITY: In the 80s, Barbie proved  that girls can do anything! AD SONG: ♪ And we girls can dream  anything, right Barbie, right Barbie? ♪ VERITY: And yes there have been some  controversies over the years with regards to how she

affects girls body image,  but even that has changed now! In 2016, Mattel released 3 new body types, finally  bringing some body diversity to the brand. And now, with their Inspiring Women doll series,  you can buy Barbies of famous historical women such as Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Helen Keller  and of course, a most barbilicious Frida Kahlo! Barbie helps to show girls that they can have  jobs, just like men! The feminism is real. Except… Mattel actually seems pretty  averse to the word “femin

ism.” They recently went so far as to state that  the new film is “not a feminist movie.” Huh, okay, that casts a slightly  different light on things. I guess Barbie “went galactic four years  before men” did, but the first woman had actually already been to space a few years before  the Barbie astronaut outfit was released. Funny how Mattel never mentions that, they just  heavily imply that she beat men to the moon, even though going to the moon wasn’t part  of the original astronaut costume ma

rketing. And yeah, Barbie did release new body types,  but only after their profit crashed in 2015. Mattel needed to rebrand because the  decades of body image criticism caught up with them and everyone saw Barbie as  irrelevant and socially irresponsible. The new body types were major press fodder, and who doesn't love some free  advertising through media reports? But if you actually look at the bodies…  we’ve got classic skinny, short skinny, tall skinny, and slim thick, who is actually  still

really skinny compared to real women’s bodies. She’s just rocking that 2010s Kim  Kardashian booty. Is this body diversity? Barbie’s body has been controversial  since the beginning. In 1959, mums weren’t comfortable with the idea of  getting their daughters a doll with boobs. And this chick came with very skimpy outfits  early on including the "nighty negligee set". Barbie’s design itself was actually snatched  from a sexy german doll made for men, Bild Lili. Ruth Handler of Mattel, who is  cr

edited with creating Barbie, found Lili while on vacation and Mattel copied the doll who looks  almost exactly the same as the original Barbie. Jack Ryan, the designer who engineered  Barbie, wanted her to be the perfect woman. BOB MACKIE: They copied her  exactly like the German one, you know. So she had a little  waist and great big, pointy ti-- VERITY: So no wonder the doll  made parents uncomfortable! To bypass parents' anxieties  about this very provocative toy, Mattel started selling her a

s a doll to teach  “self-presentation skills” to little girls. Barbie was GOOD for girls actually! And  this marketing technique is still around today. Girls can do anything! We love the  idea that Barbie is actually a tool to help girls become better women. After all, who  encourages more girls to run for president, Shirley Chisolm, Kamala Harris  or Presidential Candidate Barbie? Would any girls really learn to paint if they  didn’t have a yassified Frida Kahlo Barbie? Won’t little girls be mo

re comfortable with  their bodies now that they have curvy Barbie? Well no, actually, studies have found that little  girls really don’t like curvy Barbie, even calling her fat. “Hello, I’m a fat person, fat, fat, fat,”  said one little girl playing while others laughed. And what I see on store shelves, to be  honest, is overwhelmingly classic Barbie. And of the Barbies made as film merch, only  the skinny actors were adapted to Barbies, possibly because a bigger body  shape just doesn’t even ex

ist. But why, if Mattel is so eager  to sell Barbie as feminist, do they have this aversion to the word?  If you’re going to use feminist movements to sell your product, it seems weird  to avoid the word “feminist”, right? I mean they’re perfectly comfortable  putting “girl power” on Barbie’s t-shirts, and girl power is surely feminism in  its purest most undiluted form. Right? I mean the Spice Girls  basically invented feminism, freeing all women from the shackles of patriarchy. Except that the

re was a precursor to girl  power: the Riot Grrrl punk rock movement. Riot Grrrls owned their own record  labels and created a non-hierarchical, DIY culture. They celebrated girls and  sang about controversial issues such as gendered violence, reproductive justice,  body image and sexuality. They brought feminist messages from academia  into the lives of young women. Riot Grrrl started to fall apart when  the scene started receiving more media attention which painted it as a fashion  craze rathe

r than a feminist movement. It was Riot Grrrl which came up with the notion  of girl power but the mainstream music industry realised there could be a lot of money in this  sort of branding. It was the Spice Girls who really made girl power a worldwide phenomenon,  but in the process the idea was completely watered down so that it could appeal to the  broadest possible audience for the most profit. Where Riot Grrrl was able to be openly  political because it wasn’t profit driven, the Spice Girls

on the other hand, lost a lot the  subversive power of Riot Grrrl. They were created and financed by a group of men who strategically  engineered the group to fit a gap in the market. Their work wasn’t rooted in feminism, it  was looking to make a fashion craze.They didn’t critique the status quo, they  didn’t talk about systemic change, they relied on traditional notions  of beauty and the media loved them because they generated massive amounts of  attention and profit. The DIY culture of Riot

Grrrl feminism was turned into an endless  stream of “girl power” merchandise for sale. So there’s this commodification - we take a  movement with a more radical message, something which demands systemic change in our society,  and we flatten it into an aesthetic, a style, mass manufactured and packaged and placed on the  shelves for purchase. It's a plastic feminism. The movement becomes mainstream,  but it’s a neutered version of it, a powerless version. It’s not a movement, it’s  a t-shirt.

Barbie in a GRL PWR t-shirt is a far cry from girl power’s Riot Grrrl roots. This  Barbie doesn’t care about reproductive justice. Frida Kahlo’s image and life  have been used in a similar way. In 2018, Barbie herself made a  vlog about Frida Kahlo because it was Barbie’s birthday and this  was her gift to her subscribers. BARBIE: My birthday present to you  is to share the story of Frida Kahlo. VERITY: Wow, that’s so nice of her to educate  girls about Frida! Totally by coincidence, unmentioned

by Barbie, Mattel released their  Frida Kahlo Barbie doll at the same time! Now girls could feel inspired by  this totally affordable Frida doll! Frida herself was actually… a communist and an anti-capitalist and would  have absolutely hated the doll. She also deliberately defied gender roles,  classical beauty ideals and the objectification of women, both in her life and her work.  She portrayed women’s bodies as blemished, imperfect, real and de-eroticised, a polar  opposite to everything Bar

bie represents. Her family members went on to protest  the doll. Frida’s great niece said: "It should have been a much more Mexican  doll, [...] with darker skin, a unibrow, not so thin because Frida was not that thin…” But the real Kahlo isn’t what’s important. It’s  the image that Kahlo brings to the Barbie brand and to Mattel. She has come to be associated in  popular culture with feminism on some vague level, and that’s enough for Mattel to want to use her  image for their brand, to help par

ents see that, like Barbie with her vlog, they just  care about empowering young girls. When Disney decided that it was time to take  their classic cartoon about a young woman who is imprisoned by a cruel violent man  until she learns to love him and update it with a more progressive live-action remake,  they cast Emma Watson in the leading role. Watson had been in the public eye  recently for her UN Speech on feminism, asking men to be more involved in ending  sexism. This new image of Emma Wat

son as the inoffensive voice of feminist youth made  her an ideal candidate for the role of Belle. Disney has long suffered from feminist critiques  of their films, Beauty and the Beast not the least of them. After all, earlier versions of  the fairy tale were about arranged marriage, preparing girls for the self sacrifice  that comes with it. Perhaps your husband will be super freaking gross, but  you can learn to love him if you try. Could Watson’s image give Beauty and the  Beast a feminist v

ibe for the 21st century? Well, I’ll tell you something, she stepped up  to the plate with some big changes in mind. Yes, it's still a film about a cruel abusive  man who imprisons her and then tries to get her to fall in love with him, but  it's important to note that Emma Watson was involved in making sure Belle wore  more sensible shoes while he did it. She also made sure that Belle wasn’t  carrying a basket around town, but rather had pockets to carry things in. Her Belle is also an inventor

, inventing  a washing machine early in the film, though she never uses that  skill again at any point. I know, this sounds like a lot, and we  really have to give Disney some credit here. Emma Watson was like “since  I’m playing a farmer girl, can I not wear ballet shoes?” And Disney was  like “whew. This is it. The feminist revolution.” I do think Emma Watson’s feminism is sincere,  but it has ended up being funnelled back into the Hollywood machine and used for Disney’s  progressive rebrand,

her role in the film giving a veneer of feminist glamour to a soulless  remake written, directed and produced by men. Watson has also starred in  Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and Gerwig too has come to be associated with  feminism in film, and her involvement with the Barbie film immediately informed public  opinion before it had even premiered. Feminism has become Gerwig’s brand, and  social change is in fashion. In fact, Gerwig seems to be building her career on remaking  big franchises with a

progressive coat of paint: it was recently revealed that Netflix has  hired her to write and direct new Narnia films. So of course, Barbie was always going  to be an immediate feminist classic. Barbie isn’t just skinny and  conventionally attractive anymore, she comes in all shapes and sizes  ranging from skinny to slim! There are even two curvier Barbies with  a whole five lines between them! You may remember Barbie as the  whitest woman on the planet, but that’s not true anymore! Except for 

the lead Barbie played by Margot Robbie who is the main character and gets  the vast majority of the screentime. And don’t worry, the movie is super self  aware about the problematic history of Barbie. A girl named Sasha who has become  disillusioned with Barbie lists off everything she hates about the  doll, from body image problems, to just generally calling her a fascist,  as any average Gen Z-er would do. The way in which the film  highlights feminist issues is what makes it so appealing to

a modern audience. Because the fact is, we love to feel like  we can shop our way through social change, that our purchases will make a  difference. And Mattel knows it. Worried about the horrifying effects of  Barbie’s plastic bodies on the environment? Well don’t panic, Mattel has produced special  Environmental Activist Barbies which are partially made from recycled plastics, which  means, since they’ve already been partially recycled once, that they can never ever  be recycled again and will

exist forever. These Barbies hate plastic, but  are made of plastic! They hate their very existence. [muffled  screams] That’s why they scream. Oh well, that seems like a losing battle,  perhaps instead we can buy our way out of sexism. Girls aren’t making it in STEM careers? Well Barbie’s here to support and empower  them with their Barbie STEM dolls! Of course, in the real world, the reason  why there are so few women in STEM is not because they haven’t considered  whether Barbie could work i

n STEM, it’s because they face misogyny at every turn,  from the gendered expectations of teachers to hostile and abusive work environments. They  have fewer opportunities and are paid less. But maybe if little girls  could only buy a STEM Barbie then they would finally see that girls can  do anything! If you believe in yourself, no amount of misogyny or violence can  stand in your way, am I right ladies? To be fair, Mattel does offer school workshops and mentorship conferences to support girls 

in their ambitions, investing as much as 0% - sorry I mean - 0.1% of their profit into  supporting girls. Wow, they really do care! Yeah, no it's just a load of faux feminist  marketing. It’s meant to give you that feeling that you’ve made a small difference  in the world by making your purchase, that you’ve done a shop for social change. And um, sorry Greta Gerwig, but the  film isn’t any better than that. For instance, in one scene Margot Robbie’s Barbie  says she feels ugly, and the scene pa

uses so that the narrator can make a comment about how  Margot Robbie is too pretty to say that. And the point is for the movie to be like, “Body  image, am I right, ladies?” And now you can’t say in your reviews and your tweets that the film  didn’t bring up body image problems. It really did. The feminist revolution. Started with Emma  Watson’s shoes and now here we are. Incredible! The film really slows itself down trying to  anticipate all of your potential criticisms. It’s like they scrolle

d through twitter and found every  half baked complaint about Barbie and just shoved a line into the film to try to preemptively  counteract it, and it gets pretty tiresome. But that’s because this isn’t really a film  about feminism. It’s a mainstream film made for the widest possible audience, trying  to reach everyone at the same time without saying anything of any real substance.  Flattened, plastic wrapped feminism. Because while the film can call out  problems like Barbie and body image, a

popular topic which probably everyone has  probably had at least one conversation about, there are other problems they can’t ever confront. A few years ago, China Labor Watch  sent undercover investigators into Mattel’s factories in China where they  make their toys, including Barbies, and they found that life for the  women who make Barbie… isn’t so great. For instance, they found that most workers  were women and most higher ups were men. Female workers reported regular verbal  abuse and humi

liation by line managers. Workers’ dormitories housed  up to 10 people per room, and were infested by fleas,  mosquitos and other bugs. There was no hot water in the showers, the cold  water was dirty, and the toilets had no doors. The food in the factory cafeterias  was served on dirty dishes and workers found hair and cockroaches in their meals. The pay was so low the workers  had to work illegal amounts of overtime if they wanted to make a living wage. They described production targets as  in

humane and they were not provided with safety equipment, even when  working with dangerous materials. Female workers reported a climate of  frequent and trivialized sexual harassment. When Mattel was made aware of the harassment  and discrimination in their factories, they did not announce any  measures to stamp it out. The latest undercover report about  Mattel’s factories concludes, “At the very least, women who produce  Barbie dolls should be able to work without fear of humiliation or harass

ment.  Barbie makes a mockery of women's rights”. So weird they didn’t mention any  of this in the Barbie film, huh? There’s this really emotional scene  in the film, a feminist speech about the cognitive dissonance of being a woman  under patriarchy. Gloria talks about how you need to have money but you can’t ask  for money, about how you have to put up with men’s bad behaviour and stay in line.  And she’s right, according to these reports Mattel apparently subjects the workers who  make Barbie

to this kind of abuse exactly. But then the film just shows Mattel bosses  as just silly, wacky, harmless guys. But this is how corporate feminism works: companies can’t ignore the new feminism  of the age because their customers expect them to keep up with times. So you get  these Girls Can Do Anything campaigns and “Barbie has a Butt Sometimes” campaign  and a film about defeating the patriarchy. But behind the scenes, the company can’t  actually be feminist because that would be bad for busi

ness. They know exactly  what’s going on at their factories, but that won’t stop them demanding higher  production targets for lower production costs. That’s just business, baby. You can’t girlboss  without just a little bit of labour exploitation. The day after watching the film, my co-writer Ada  and I both were feeling a little down, and after a while we started talking about what was bothering  us and found that we were both feeling bad about our bodies, that since watching the film we had 

come out just feeling worse about how we look. And that actually surprised us,  because we both kind of thought that Barbie would leave us with some  good vibes, little bit girl power, but it actually just reminded us  of how high the standards are. Yes, Barbie tells a wrinkled  old woman that she’s beautiful, but at the same time you can buy  some official Barbie anti-wrinkle cream. “Have smooth skin like Barbie”  with official Barbie Bikini Serum! Or you can buy some official NYX  Barbie make

up! And don’t forget: your teeth are ugly too! Barbie wants  you to feel good about yourself, while reminding you that you will never  be good enough without these products! As Jessica Defino puts it, “you cannot  subvert the politics of Barbie while preserving the beauty standards of Barbie.  The beauty standards ARE the politics”. This film is about how Barbie is a victim of  the same misogyny women face every day. They want us to feel that Barbie is not an “it,” not  a successful brand, not a

n intellectual property, but a “she,” a victim, a person, a woman.  She may be selling you cosmetics for “smooth, firm” skin, but it's only because she  too has felt the shame of cellulite! The film is a great ad. But is  it feminist? Is it really fair to call it that? Is liberation factory made?  And if so, who’s working in the factory? The whole system of media and culture  is broken, it’s built on exploitation, and Gerwig hasn’t like taken advantage of that  system to create great feminist ci

nema, she’s just been absorbed into the system. This film could  never have been anything other than what it was. I’m afraid the feminism of Barbie is an  artificial and appropriated one designed specifically to sell you products,  many many products, and nothing more. So instead of buying a ticket to see Barbie, consider supporting this channel on Patreon!  That sounds like a fine thing to say! I don’t get paid as much as Greta Gerwig  and I won’t try to sell you any serums … unless you want me

to? Thank you to all our patrons who make this  possible and a very special thank you to…