By Kaye Toal
Dear Mattel CEO Robert Eckert, I’ve got a bone to pick with Barbie.
Recently, I saw Mattel’s new ad for Barbie promoting her “I Can Be Anything” line, and at first I was not all that annoyed by it. It’s okay: young girls of various ethnicities talk about how they can be anything they want to be, how they can dream and use their imaginations and whatnot, and how they do this through Barbie. The last girl, who has lovingly ensconced her Barbie into the water-bottle holder of her spunky pink backpack, looks into the camera and says “I can be anything. And that’s everything.”
Huh, I thought. Anything? Really? Because they certainly can’t be Barbie.
Mr. Eckert, to my knowledge Barbie’s ad campaign has rarely deviated from the realm of fantasy. But with this campaign you claim that she presents a series of potential futures that purport to be concrete options for young girls. My concern is that, after browsing your site, I see that those potential futures are absurdly limited. I understand that Barbie, as a toy for young girls, doesn’t claim to represent anyone’s reality; however with this ad campaign she’s no longer claiming to represent strictly the realm of fantasy. Mr. Eckert, I have a problem with that.
You see, you are manufacturing a toy for young girls that will shape their perception of themselves and their peers. But Barbie doesn’t have any friends with different body types. She doesn’t have any friends who are women of color and don’t look basically like the white mold made of darker plastic. Barbie doesn’t have any queer or trans* friends and she is not queer or trans* herself. Barbie’s not a feminist or a womanist or a humanist or any kind of activist, and she doesn’t have any friends who are, either. Barbie doesn’t even seem particularly socially aware. I guess a collector’s edition recently came out that featured an elaborately tattooed version of Barbie, but other than that Barbie isn’t doing anything new. She’s just reinforcing all the old stereotypes about “acceptable” girl- and womanhood. Do you understand how damaging that is?
With this ad campaign and new line of toys, Barbie says to young girls that in the future they can be anything they want to be! As long as it’s thin, white-looking and straight, and as long as you want to be a doctor or a baker or a babysitter or teacher or an architect (kudos for that one, actually, I was very pleasantly surprised). With Barbie, you are saying to girls that they can indeed be anything you want to be – as long as that “anything” still falls within very specific parameters.
I didn’t really play with Barbie when I was younger. I didn’t have any particular resentment against her. I don’t think Barbie damaged me in any way. But I understood that Barbie and I had nothing in common: she belonged to the blessed, the beautiful, the “right way.” She belonged then, as she belongs now, to a culture that alienates people that aren’t like her, and you are contributing to that culture. It is a culture leads to LGBTQ suicides, rape apologist riots at Penn State University, rising rates of eating disordered behavior in ever-younger girls, and a thousand other kinds of oppression. If you think that you do not have a hand in that culture, being the CEO of one of the most popular toy companies in the world, you are sorely mistaken.
Mr. Eckert, Barbie isn’t “anything,” and she never has been. She is a very small, very narrow portion of people that inhabit this world and she teaches through her wholehearted participation in that culture that there is a right and wrong way to be a girl.
I just don’t think that true. I don’t think there’s a wrong way to be a girl.
Mr. Eckert, your company is working for more sustainable sources and more responsible buying. This indicates to me a level of social awareness that is commendable, and so I would like you to think about this: if Barbie had a chubby friend who did anything Barbie could do and wasn’t accompanied by any propaganda other than positive body image – say in some movie where she ate healthily, went to a dance and was happy, and everyone thought she was beautiful, and she was still chubby – imagine how amazing that would be. Imagine how much good that would do for little girls everywhere.
Apply that concept to anything: Barbie gets a girlfriend. Barbie’s friends in general all have different body types. Barbie’s an engineer or a physicist instead of a princess or a babysitter or a teacher. What if Barbie really was “anything,” whatever “anything” might be, just like people are? What if she taught girls that they are beautiful and intelligent and strong instead of teaching them that there’s a right and a wrong way to be girls? What would that world look like?
“Barbie’s an engineer or a physicist instead of a princess or a babysitter or a teacher.” only barbie has been an engineer, as recently as 2010 a computer engineer barbie was released. in fact, MANY of the recent barbie careers have been less gender biased [news anchor, architect, etc]
i’m not denying the problematic aspects of barbie, but this article comes off as a little poorly researched.
Hi! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment on the blog; I really appreciate it.
I’m definitely aware of the movement of Barbie’s careers away from traditionally gendered ones (I did mention the architect). But the question I’d like to pose is this: can you find those dolls easily in the “girl” aisles at toy stores, or are they basically collector’s editions? I haven’t been able to easily find them; maybe others have had better luck, but the Barbies that are being marketed in earnest to young girls are almost universally those that conform to still-rigid gender roles. And frankly, a lot of the “smart” Barbies are exactly the same as other Barbies – just with glasses.
Girls can’t be what they can’t see. I would LOVE it if architect Barbie or computer engineer Barbie were actually, y’know, present on the shelves. But in my experience, and the experience of many of those I talked to, they’re not. And that’s a problem.
I agree with your point that the I can be anything series should be less stereotyped and constantly available in stores. There is a practical consideration about having different body sizes, because they can’t wear the same clothes. However, this would be a marketing opportunity for Mattel, if they realized it. I wish that there had been a physicist Barbie when I was a child.
I never liked Barbie, because I felt like she never did anything except dress up to be pretty. I never cared for that. Sure, I’d dress in context-specific clothes, but that’s not the same thing. I wanted toys that would have adventures and the like.
The bizarre thing about the Barbie situation to ME is–a few years back, Mattel bought out Pleasant Company, acquiring the rights to the much more realistically-proportioned American Girl dolls. AG dolls are intended to be of elementary-age girls, not teens like Barbie. They’ve always been a little chubby, as if they still have a bit of their “baby fat.” Yet for some reason, the AG dolls haven’t been slimmed down one bit since the Mattel buyout. They’re still the nice, realistic weight they always were.
I’m tempted to order one of the slimmer Carpetina dolls (note: still slim within reason and anatomical possibility!) just so I can finally (as an adult!) have 18″ dolls with different body types. It always bothered me that Barbie and all the other similarly-sized dolls out there are the same shape.