It comes as no surprise that sales of “Pandemic Barbie” are booming. As the culture cycles backwards and women are spending as much time cooking and homeschooling children as they used to spend in offices, and even more with housework and shopping for food piled on top, and as the men in the situation revert to what has never really changed—their unwillingness by and large to share these burdens—the old stereotypes re-emerge, “revamped,” according to Mattel, but not really. This, after a long decline in sales, seems to toll the funeral bell for this doll.
Revamped, but not really. How could it be? From its beginning sixty-one years ago, the doll has depended on a totally unrealistic version of women’s bodies and faces for its popularity—but what doll has not? The noun itself, “doll,” is a popular affectionate term for a woman, although decades of feminist criticism of the stereotype, joined by some parents and children, had slowly eroded Barbie’s popularity.
But now she’s back in force. Last October, in a bow to political correctness and sales, a digital version engaged in a talk about race justice. And that doll, called Fashionista, now comes in 22 different skin tones, 13 eye colors and five body types; some even have artificial legs and ride in wheelchairs. The doll that sold most in 2020 came in a wheelchair.
But I doubt if there’s one that looks to be thirty pounds overweight.
There’s still that face, big-eyed, smiling coyly, under an abundance of hair; there are still those breasts, prominently displayed, and those impossibly long legs.
To be fair, the doll I loved all through my childhood and still give a place to on my altar was called “Cherry Ripe” and has blond hair of an unearthly fairness and a sweet little blond and blue-eyed face.
We are all part of the objectifying of women and girls, and now of a return—as after every war—to women in the kitchen.
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