As a lifelong Barbie doll lover and a #girlmom I was excited to see the new Barbie movie. The movie came out during the Nine Days so I didn’t get to see it right away, which meant that I had to avoid accidentally reading any spoilers. Well that didn’t go as planned and I ended up scrolling through an article that used the word “woke” in the worst kind of way to describe the movie’s theme. For a hot second I almost didn’t go, but how could I pass up the opportunity to wear pink and hang out with my daughters?
Unlike many moms, I didn’t (and don’t) think that Barbies are inherently bad. Unrealistic? Sure. But when I was a little girl playing with dolls, I wasn’t interested in reality; I wanted sparkles, and pink and more pink. I wanted a doll with long blond hair and gorgeous gowns (pink! sparkly!) who lived in a dream house (pink! sparkly!) and drove a cool car (pink! sparkly!).
My aunt once came to visit and brought Skipper dolls for me and my sister. Skipper was Barbie’s little sister and, like Barbie, came in various iterations. My sister got Malibu Skipper, a sunkissed, preteen goddess with waist length bleached blond hair. She was beautiful. My Skipper was supposed to simulate a more natural preteen; she was pale and freckled and her hair was frizzy. I hated her. I spent months trying to cajole my sister to trade with me, but my little sister was no pushover. It took six months and some other promises for me to wear her down, and I can still feel the triumph of its acquisition as well as the silky softness of her impossibly beautiful hair. Years later my sister would buy me the Eye Doctor Barbie as a birthday gift. I loved it so much that I took it out of the box and put it on my dresser with all the other little tchotchkes that bring out my inner 5-year-old. So yeah, I was going to see the Barbie movie no matter how “woke” it was.
The premise of the movie (spoilers ahead) is that Stereotypical Barbie has an existential crisis and leaves Barbie World for the Real World to find the girl who is playing with her. Presumably, Stereotypical Barbie’s owner is having her own existential crisis, which is causing Barbie to experience all sorts of terrible malfunctions, such as developing cellulite and bad breath.
The exact plot details are cute but irrelevant and the movie’s message is unsubtly condensed into a soliloquy given by Gloria, who is Barbie’s Real World owner. Gloria addresses her Barbie: “It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart and it kills me that you think you’re not good enough … you have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin … you have to never get old … never fail, never show fear … and if all that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”
It was interesting to me how quiet it got in the theater at that point and I actually had to brush away a tear when one of her examples hit too close to home. At the end of the movie an idea is pitched for Ordinary Barbie, a woman who does not have to be a doctor/dentist/president/pilot/CEO/astronaut or thin/tall/cellulite-free, but instead can be a regular woman in a regular blouse living a regular life.
I like the concept of Ordinary Barbie, but women’s lives are so multifaceted and diverse, that I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of backstory this doll would have or what she would look like. One of the unexpected and unfortunate side effects of the feminist movement has been the pressure on women to do it all, to have it all and to feel guilty or bad about themselves when they fail at it. Or worse, when they don’t even want any part of it.
Women in the frum world are not immune to any of this. When my older daughter was dating, she, or rather her resume, was rejected multiple times because of her career as a textile designer. She was considered “too artsy,” her career too niche. My second daughter, who is pursuing a dual degree in medicine and research, is labeled “too smart, too career-minded.” Like in the Barbie World, you need to be smart, but not too smart; pretty, but only in a certain way; career- minded, but only for those careers whose training can be expedited into an 18-month program that accepts all of your seminary credits. And on the other end, God forbid if you “only” aspire to be a full-time mother.
My daughters were disappointed that the movie did not reference any of the animated Barbie movies (“Swan Lake,” “Mermaidia”), nor was there any sight of the princess or fairy Barbies. Ultimately though, the movie was an enjoyable trip down nostalgia lane that prompted me to come home and brush the dust off Eye Doctor Barbie’s hair and reposition her so she wasn’t slouching against my makeup brushes.
Although the movie had a lesson, it doesn’t change the fact that the whole point of Barbie is fantasy and play. She is a chance for little girls to try on and discard different personas and identities.
I didn’t grow up feeling bad that I didn’t have a figure like Barbie, nor did I grow up thinking I would become a princess who lived in a pink castle; I knew where my imagination ended and reality began. But if Mattel would ever be amenable to creating an Ordinary Barbie who has an ordinary body and an ordinary life, I wonder how they would feel about creating a Bubby Barbie.
Dr. Chani Miller is an optometrist and writer who lives in Highland Park, NJ with her family and is a member of Congregation Ohav Emeth.
