Lost in Barbieland

Deval (Reshma) PaRanjPe, mD, mBa, FaCs

Early one Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I realized I actually had a few hours free. What did I do? I bought a ticket on Fandango and raced to the movie theater before the practical side of me could change my mind. I had really wanted to see Barbieheimer, that unholysounding double-feature of Barbie and Oppenheimer, but I only had two hours, and Oppenheimer was three all by itself. Barbie it had to be that day.

I had read the reviews, of course, and was incredibly curious. Could director Greta Gerwig actually pull off an intelligent, many-layered take on a childhood doll and her fantasy world which remained true to the memories of many American generations and avoided being annoying? Could it skirt the polarization of the American populace today and skewer it at the same time? Could it make you laugh and provide some much needed escape?

The answer is yes, on all counts.

Barbie is not woke; it skewers “wokeness”. Barbie is not ultraconservative; it roasts the “manosphere”. The message of this movie is that common sense and equilibrium need to return to the world where gender relations are concerned. Furthermore, both men and women take refuge in fantasy worlds to help themselves deal with the problems of an incredibly confusing real world, and that this approach, while understandable, isn’t particularly mature or helpful after a point.

Spoiler alert.

Barbie wakes up in Barbieland every morning looking perfect, pretends to eat a plastic waffle and pours herself pretend milk. She wafts down from her Barbie Dream House and straight into her high-heeled shoes, and drives her pink convertible to the beach, where Ken can be found. In fact, all the Kens can be found there. All women in Barbieland are called Barbie; they come in every color. Barbies are distinguished either by profession (President Barbie, Doctor Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, Journalist Barbie, Physicist Barbie etc etc) or by attribute (Stereotypical Barbie, Weird Barbie etc). Except of course for Skipper, and pregnant Midge, who was discontinued (ironically, because reallife conservative parents disapproved of a pregnant doll and not, as some men’s rights activists claim, because the premise of Barbie makes no room for motherhood). All men are called

Ken (except for Allan, Ken’s same size friend) and their only profession is Beach. Not lifeguard, not surfer, not ecologist. Just Beach. There are only two genders in the film, in keeping with the Mattel universe, which must have frustrated both progressives and “antiwoke” persons spoiling for a fight.

Ken’s only purpose in life is to be with Barbie. He is allowed no other aspirations in Barbieland—every position other than Beach (one of many double entendres) is held exclusively by women. Ken’s natural competitive instincts are both stimulated and stymied by the very nature of Barbieland. To add insult to injury, he is continually heartbroken because Barbie won’t give him any alone time, preferring either to throw elaborate dance parties or have girls’ night…every night. Barbie has no self-awareness and treats Ken like a child incapable of making his own adult decisions. Naturally, this makes Ken sad and angry and frustrated, although by his own admission he has no idea what he’d do with Barbie alone anyway since they’re anatomically incorrect. This applies to all Kens in Barbieland—they feel like superfluous accessories.

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All of this changes one day when Barbie wakes up and has a Very Bad Day (wakes up looking terrible, has burnt toast and spoiled milk, and develops flat feet and thoughts of death). Sent to see the mystic Weird Barbie (the one whose hair was cut off and dyed with magic marker), she is offered a Matrix-like choice of red or blue pill and instantly chooses her old life again, only to discover that choice is an illusion and that she must go to the real world to find and fix the psychological crisis of the little girl who is playing with her. Ken stows away for the ride and together they discover that the real world is the opposite of Barbieland in terms of gender and power, much to Barbie’s chagrin and Ken’s delight. Barbie finds the two female humans who are responsible for her plight, and Ken evangelizes Barbieland with the Patriarchy. Absolute chaos ensues in both worlds.

I won’t spoil what happens next, but the ghost of Ruth Handler, Barbie’s American creator played by a kindly no-nonsense Rhea Perlman, intervenes like a watchmaker God. She makes sense of both worlds for us and liberates Barbie (and Ken, and by extension all of us) to make her own choices and not feel bound by what society or prevailing trends want us to do or be.

Ironically, the first Barbie doll design was directly stolen from that of a post-WW2 German doll called Lilli who worked in the oldest profession. Handler had decidedly different career choices in mind for her Barbie doll.

For some girls in my generation and the ones before, Barbie and all her various respectable professions were indeed a license to dream big. If Barbie could be a doctor, then so could any little girl. Representation is critically important, especially when you are told by adults and children alike that “girls aren’t doctors, only men can be doctors!”. I wonder how many women in medicine today who grew up without female physician role models were inspired or reassured by Doctor Barbie, and it makes me happy.

My personal relationship with Barbie was decidedly different. My parents are both physicians, so I had role models-and I was told in no uncertain terms by both of them at the age of 3 that I was also expected to be a physician when I grew up. I could be anything else—the sky was the limit—lawyer, marine biologist, private detective, FBI agent, novelist, ballerina—but only after I graduated from medical school.

Furthermore, my mother, a pediatrician, didn’t approve of girls playing with Barbie dolls before a certain age due to concerns about causing unrealistic body image issues and eating disorders. So when four-year old me asked for a Barbie in first grade, the answer was no (and looking back, I think my mother was absolutely right). This caused rejection from the little girls in my peer group, whose position was “you can’t play with us if you don’t have a Barbie, and no, we won’t share or take turns. Besides, you don’t look like Barbie.” They were all blonde; I was me. I had just one kind girl friend who would play astronaut with me at lunch time—we’d sit in adjacent cubbies and go through an entire meticulous pre-launch and blast-off sequence and describe the stars and the planets and universe to each other while eating PB+J sandwiches. I’m grateful to her even now for taking some time off from Barbie each day to play with me.

But all of this left me a social pariah, with no choice but to approach The Boys for friendship. The Boys were not concerned with thoughts of homemaking or even career. They were only concerned with two games: Cars and War. In fact, they were not concerned with me or my gender; they were just glad to have an extra soldier on their team. None cared except for one of them with an attitude (rumors swirled that his father hit him for not being macho enough) who insisted that I couldn’t play War because I was a girl, and that I couldn’t play Cars because I didn’t own a Matchbox Car. Two nice boys who considered me their kid sister firmly stuck up for me, insisted I would be a good lookout during wargames, and kindly shared the “less cool” Matchbox Cars from their private collections with me during playtime. The boy with the attitude had no choice but to shut up. My sponsors’ team also won the wargames when they happily learned I could craft them an entire GI Joe Navy out of reinforced paper boats. (My grandmother had taught me origami.)

In her own way, Barbie taught me some powerful lessons through my exile. She taught me that there are kind and reasonable people to be found among both men and women. She taught me that men make great friends and allies, should be appreciated for their character and actions, and were not to be looked primarily as a necessary component to getting married and having a family—a lesson some of those other girls may never have had the chance to learn in person. I hope they did get that chance—I am fortunate I did. I hope the kind boys who spoke up against their peers and loaned me their racecars also grew up knowing that girls make great friends and allies and should similarly be appreciated for who they are as people--not viewed as mysterious creatures or sex objects. I hope they continued their kindness and inclusivity towards women as adults.

I learned that women can sometimes fence themselves in, and that courage and imagination is needed to break the mold and blast off into space. I learned that sexism among men can be born of pain and insecurity, and that it just takes a few good men who act as mentors and allies to speak up and level the playing field for women on grown-up societal battlefields. I hope that we are all better adults for those experiences. I certainly have a lot of men friends today that I treasure--and a close group of female friends chosen for their similarity to that little girl who broke away and played astronaut--because of Barbie.

My mother felt bad and unexpectedly bought me a Barbie doll in high school. I was touched and grateful for the gift, but also confused because I thought the time for playing with Barbies was long past. I knew I was going into medicine and was excited about it by then. And then I remembered—Barbie was not just a career doll—she was a fashion plate! I had discovered fashion magazines by high school, made her great costumes and gorgeous gowns for fun and dreamt of wearing them in real life one day— a great distraction while studying for the SATs.

Like Ruth Handler said, both Barbie and the Patriarchy are both just crutches for humans to deal with a confusing and often painful world. Ultimately, you have to break free of both to find yourself, relate to each other with kindness and respect, and make the choices that feel right to you without self-judgment or worrying what others think.

Maybe I can still be a private detective. I have the fedora, after all.