Watching my daughter imagine her Barbie’s career, I came to see how Barbie acquired a more extensive set of skills over the years than I had ever imagined as a child
My seven-year-old daughter is in a summer camp this week, away from her pink-filled room, and I’ve been using her absence to disappear hoarded restaurant crayons, Kinder rubbish, and dust coated stuffies. Her Barbies give me pause; although a part of me feels that chucking them would be an act of kindness, another part of me knows that Barbie is something more.
I knew the genesis of my mum’s frown because she had already explained that no woman looked like Barbie, nor should any woman try to look like Barbie. It was all fake. My brain said, “Of course, Mum. All toys are fake.” I rolled my eyes too. But I do remember looking at the body proportions and thinking that the hips sat enormously wider than the waist; that it was a struggle to pull up pants over such hips, even on slick, shiny plastic.
Days later, my friend Felicia, a successful lawyer, shared how she had banned Barbie years ago, even though her daughter begged for a doll. Felicia argued that Barbie had no real career at the time. Barbie had no purpose for her existence and no real aspirations. It’s tough to know her motivations, her inner thoughts. She never stops smiling. Her eyes don’t even close.
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