Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Barbie Girls Claiming Back their Barbie World

As a little girl nothing compared to the smell of a new Barbie. It smelt like love and ambition. It smelt like a new job. Independence. I remember the pink of the box. The shine of her blonde hair stapled to cardboard. Her tiny pointy feet pushed into stilettos. Her giant nipple-less breasts screaming to the world that she was an unashamed sexual icon who clearly wouldn’t be breastfeeding. It seemed like a very sexualised toy for a kid. I think that’s why I love her so much.

The feminist in me has carried some shame about my secret Barbie love affair. This unrealistic plastic rendition of impossible female beauty. This white privilege plaything. But now, thanks to the Barbie movie, and a re-think, Barbie may have in fact been our first feminist icon in a box. Barbie is cool. Pink is back. And I’m standing on my tiptoes in childlike excitement.

So what if instead of being a tool of the patriarchy to shame and enslave us, Barbie unwittingly became our first feminist hero? Barbie was smokin’ hot. Had no husband. Barbie had a job. Actually she has had heaps of jobs. She could have run TURSA. In fact a google told me that Barbie has had over 200 careers, including more recent forays into the STEM field. 

She’s been an architect, an astrophysicist, an astronaut, a chemist, a computer engineer. She’s also been a pastry chef, a game show host, an interior designer, a rock star, a violinist, a news anchor, a cashier, a Mary Kay consultant, and most recently she’s had a food truck and been the US president. Barbie can serve. And most importantly Barbie can lead.  Barbie has been a girl boss before girl boss was even a thing. I think that’s why I loved Barbie. I wanted to be a girl boss too. Ken just doesn’t cut it in the powerful man department. He just isn’t that interesting. Or capable.

Ken pretty well surfs and hangs out at Barbie’s house. As far as I can remember I don’t think Ken really has a job, except as Barbie’s man accessory. He puts on a tux, or a pair of boardies and sleeps on her couch. In the Barbie house. It’s a Barbie house – she owns the property AND the car. She’s not staying in a Ken house. Or driving a Ken car. 

Barbie was never about motherhood. She was a loner. Except for all the other Barbies. She ran with a pack of pointy-toed career women. Sure there was the moment when she had a clip-on pregnancy, but once that was over the baby was nowhere to be seen. She went back to her voracious lust for career change, and all the fabulous outfits that come with it. 

I sometimes wonder if Skipper wasn’t in fact her sister, but the secret fruit of Barbie’s own teenage pregnancy. At least that was the game I used to play with my Barbies. I was raised by a single mum so when I played Barbies they all went to work, had careers and they were all single mums. Or lesbians. Ken rarely visited. On the odd occasion if a man did pop by it would be Steve Austin. The Bionic Man. And Barbie wasn’t into him at all. In fact, my Barbies bullied Steve. He met his end when he failed the wheel of death challenge with my desk fan.

When I was a little girl I wanted to grow up to be just like Barbie. And weirdly, it kind of happened.  Although I have nipples and pubic hair. And a tummy. I’m in the phase of my life that I like to call Menopausal Climate Change Barbie. In fact, when I looked at the corflutes from my tilt at the federal seat last election that’s exactly what I looked like. Maybe this is the matriarchal uprising they never expected. Beautiful compliant resourceful women becoming ferociously successful arse-kicking social justice ninjas. 

Put on the pink. Feminist revolutionary Barbie has arrived. She Guavara is here. Ken, get the car.