The plastic feminism of Barbie

Written by: Ting Yan Tong (23-I1)

Designed by: Chong Hern Hsuen, Rachael (24-O1)

“She’s everything. He’s just Ken,” reads the film’s tagline. Feminism in Barbie is a complicated subject, one that has been ridiculed, criticised and praised over the years. With the release of the Barbie movie in 2023, discussion over her role as a feminist icon has yet again reemerged. Barbie has come a long way since her roots in 1959. Throughout her existence, Barbie has had more than 250 careers. She broke the plastic ceiling when she went to the moon in 1965, four years before Neil Armstrong. Since then, she has been everything from a doctor to a palaeontologist to a rock star to a computer engineer.

However, is Barbie truly a feminist icon? Most importantly, does she have to be one? In today’s article, we’ll be discussing how the role of Barbie has shifted over the years and its changing impact on society!

Chapter 1: Barbie’s body

The movie opens up with a scene of little girls smashing their baby dolls before Barbie appears in the background in a heroic stance, a symbol of modernity and progress, dressed in her black and white bathing suit as a homage to the first Barbie created. No longer were girls expected to play exclusively with baby dolls, training from a young age to be caregivers, now they can be anything their hearts desire, in a world where women truly can have it all! But, Barbie has courted controversy since her birth. Her creator, Ruth Handler, based Barbie’s body on a German doll called Lilli, a prostitute gag gift handed out at bachelor parties. Thus, her proportions were designed accordingly, with research showing that if Barbie was a real person, she would have to walk on all fours due to her body proportions!

By 1963 women were protesting the same body men had ridiculed, insisting that “nobody would want to play with a doll with breasts”. That year, a teen Barbie was sold with a diet book that recommended simply, “Don’t eat.” However, in spite of her origins, Mattel has repeatedly claimed that Barbie has no influence on girls’ body image, pointing to whisper-thin models and even moms as the source of the dissatisfaction that too many young girls feel about their bodies. A handful of studies, however, suggest that Barbie does have at least some influence on what girls see as the ideal body. The most compelling, a 2006 study published in the journal Developmental Psychology, found that girls exposed to Barbie at a young age expressed greater concern with being thin, compared with those exposed to other dolls. 

So Barbie’s unrealistic body is no doubt a problem for society, right? Well, children argue no. In 2016, Mattel released three new body types for Barbie, finally bringing “diversity” to the brand.

However, when Barbie’s new body was revealed to a group of children in a testing room at Mattel’s headquarters, she was mocked and laughed at by them. “Hello, I’m a fat person, fat, fat, fat,” a 6-year-old girl sings in a testing room at Mattel’s headquarters,  giving voice for the first time to curvy Barbie. Her playmates erupt in laughter. When an adult comes into the room and asks her if she sees a difference between the dolls’ bodies, she modifies her language. “This one’s a little chubbier,” she says. Girls in other sessions are similarly careful about labels. “She’s, well, you know,” says an 8-year-old as she uses her hands to gesture a curvier woman. A shy 7-year-old refuses to say the word fat to describe the doll, instead spelling it out, “F, a, t.” “I don’t want to hurt her feelings,” she says a little desperately. Thus, can Mattel be solely responsible for Barbie’s unrealistic beauty standards? After all, when Mattel tries to launch a more body-positive Barbie, kids are not receptive to it, preferring “skinny Barbie” over “fat Barbie”, a sign that even kids as young as 6 or 7 are already conditioned for a particular silhouette in their dolls.

If Mattel takes away everything that makes Barbie an icon, is she still that icon? Companies work for decades to create the sort of brand recognition that Barbie has. When people around the world close their eyes and think of Barbie, they see a specific body. If that body changes, Barbie could lose that status. However, parents have expressed a greater interest in Barbie after the release of her new body, with some saying they wished she was even curvier. Regardless of her origins, close to seven years later, with the release of the movie, could it now be argued that she has come a long way since then and is now a progressive feminist icon?

Chapter 2: Barbie and capitalism

In today’s political turmoil, we love to feel like we can shop our way through social changes, and Mattel knows that. Girls aren’t making it in STEM careers? Fret not for Mattel is offering school workshops and mentorship conferences to support girls in their ambitions, investing as much as 0.1% of their profits into supporting girls, using faux feminism marketing for consumers to feel as though their purchases are making a difference in the world, shopping for social change. In 2020, China Labour Watch sent undercover investigators into Mattel’s factories, uncovering the horrific abuse that workers faced. In the assembly workshop of Changan Mattel, the daily production target for each production line is around 1300 to 1400 products. Workers only have 30 minutes for a meal, and work 10 hours a day from Monday to Saturday. That is, workers have to produce over 100 products every hour, so they can complete the production target. They sometimes had delays of 30 minutes in getting off work, as they were required to stay back to complete the production target and workers were not paid for this. In clear violation of overtime laws in China which mandate that overtime hours must not exceed 36 hours a month. Female workers also faced psychological and verbal abuse by higher-ups, with a workshop team leader scolding injured workers for not being careful enough, warning them not to report back to the factory. The team leader of Dongguan Dongyao (another of Mattel’s factories) ignored workers’ requests for masks, and was passive-aggressive, ignoring workers who asked not to work overtime. This gave workers a lot of psychological pressure, and made it even harder to ask for protective equipment or not to work overtime. Workers also reported not being given safety equipment despite working with dangerous chemicals, facing sexual abuse by their managers, living in unsafe dormitories, the list goes on…

However, when Mattel was made aware of the harassment ongoing in their very own factories, they did not announce any measures to stamp it out and little was done in the end. Thus, when Gloria makes a speech in the movie about the cognitive dissonance of being a woman under patriarchy, one can’t help but deem her as hypocritical, for Mattel themselves subject their workers to the same patriarchal abuse that Gloria criticises. When the Mattel CEOs in the movie try to put Barbie back into her box, they are defeated by their own inanity, portrayed as silly, goofy men.

Since men are to be portrayed as silly, the patriarchy has to be incompetent. But that drains the supposed oppressors of any degree of threat. Ken and his peers’ regrettable competitiveness and aggression prove self-destructive, and make them easy meat for the Barbieland counter-revolution. In Barbie, men aren’t mean, violent or abusive, but rather their supposed parody of chauvinist iniquity comes across instead as a winsome display of male charm. Masculinity becomes more beguiling than abhorrent, and Ken’s eventual repentance therefore almost ironic. Even though Barbie is promoted as a feminist movie, behind the scenes, Mattel cannot actually be feminist, for that would just be bad for business. You can’t girlboss without a bit of labour exploitation!

Chapter 3: Closing thoughts

At the end of the day, Barbie is so much more than just a doll. Mattel is ultimately a capitalistic corporation that prioritises profits above all else, with Barbie bringing in $5.441 billion in 2023, a large increase due to the release of the movie. Barbie tells a wrinkled old woman that she’s beautiful, yet at the same time, you can buy official Barbie anti-wrinkle cream and official Barbie bikini serum, to have “smooth skin like Barbie” Barbie wants you to feel good about yourself, while reminding you that you can never be good enough without a collection of Barbie skincare products! 

With all that was said, millions of cinema-goers worldwide enjoyed Barbie, with many bonding over the supposed “girlhood” message of the film, decked out in pink dresses with their friends. Are they then wrong for doing so? As someone who has watched Barbie, it’s not a bad movie, in fact, I enjoyed the visuals of it and found “I’m just Ken” as funny as the next person. But calling the movie a feminist icon is not only blatantly wrong, but can also be harmful to the billions around the world still suffering under patriarchy. Thus, I am of the opinion that Barbie isn’t a feminist, in fact I’d go so far as to argue that Barbie can never be feminist due to its background and Mattel’s control of the brand. Instead, the Barbie movie was simply a brand of plastic-wrapped capitalism disguised as feminism.