128 The Australian Women’s Weekly | JUNE 2018
Pop culture
Amelia Earhart, Frida
Kahlo and Bindi Irwin
are some of the
inspiring women
immortalised as
Barbies. While some
members of Frida’s
family object to the
use – and have
successfully had her
banned from sale in
Mexico – Bindi said
she was honoured.
“This is such a special
recognition of
women and girls
who are making
a difference.”MINI ROLE
MODELSMattel
founders
Ruth and
Elliot Handler
named Barbie
after their
daughter,
Barbara. Their
son, Ken, was
also a source
of inspiration.“We dyed her hair
black and put
stitches in her
cheek, and I loved
that doll to bits
after that.”
going through a Murder Mystery phase in our
reading, they were always committing murders.”
Human rights advocate and author Tara
Moss says she cried the irst time she was given
a Barbie. “I won a running race and there were
two tables with wrapped prizes – one table for
boys and one for girls. I was told to choose a
prize from the girl’s table,” she says. Eight-year-
old Tara wanted a prize from the boys’ table,
but the race organisers were having none of
that. She selected a parcel from the designated
pile and unwrapped a Barbie.
“I remember crying my eyes out when I got
home,” she says. Fortunately, Tara’s mother,
Janni, knew just what to do and helped Tara
turn the doll into a “kind of Vampira Franken-
Barbie. We dyed her hair black and put stitches
in her cheek and things, and I loved that doll to
bits after that. I wish I still had it,” said Tara.
Pioneering African-American ilmmaker Ava
DuVernay told Vanity Fair she agreed to lend
her likeness to a Barbie because of her fond
memories of playing with
the doll. Like Tara, Ava
didn’t accept the blonde-
haired, blue-eyed Barbie she
was presented with. She
gave the dolls radical
makeovers so they more
closely resembled the most
beautiful women in her
neighbourhood – the Latina
sisters. “Spielberg had a
Super 8 camera when he
was little – I had a doll,”
she told Vanity Fair.
The DuVernay Barbie was supposed to be a
one-off but fans successfully petitioned Mattel
to make her available in stores. Even Bad
Feminist author Roxane Gay tweeted to say
she wanted one. Adult collectors will tell you
the source of the doll’s appeal is that she is a
reminder of a simpler time. Little girls, they say,
love the fantasy. Barbie had a boyfriend, but
her assets – the home, the car, the caravan, the
horse – were all hers. She represented
adulthood and agency.
Emily disagrees. “I don’t think I’ve ever come
across a girl who was aspiring to be Barbie,”
she says. The students Emily has taught, her
nieces and her younger self, all looked to the
real women in their lives for role models.
In our schoolyard, none of the Barbies were
actually called Barbie – each had her own
individual name. The irst thing any of us did
when we cut Barbie from her plastic manacles
was strip her of her clothes. The urge to chop
off her blonde hair was primal. I was never
allowed a Ken companion for my Barbie, so
when I got a new one, the old one was given
a buzz cut, dressed in a unisex handkerchief
poncho and re-christened Adam.
In an article on the female body, Margaret
Atwood depicts a scene
between two parents
discussing whether to
purchase one of the dolls.
The father objects to her
“false notion of beauty”.
The mother argues their
daughter will feel singled
out without one. In the
end their worries are for
nothing when the doll
comes “whizzing down
the stairs, thrown like a
dart”, stark naked and
hair chopped off. “She’d been tattooed all
over with purple ink in a scrollwork design,”
Atwood writes. The father concludes: “I guess
we’re safe.”
The triumph of the daughter’s imagination over
the toy she’s been presented with in Margaret
Atwood’s world is reminiscent of the play
described by the women The Weekly interviewed.
Rather than being a sex object, a surgeon or
a soccer player, Barbie was Tara’s vampire and
Emily’s cunning murderess. She was
Ava’s Latina goddess and my
poncho-wearing Adam. Mattel
may be trying to make Barbie all
things to all people, but in the
hands of imaginative girls
Barbie truly can be it
all: an astronaut with
perfect lipstick and a
buzzcut and ballpoint
pen tattoo. AW WPHOTOGRAPHY: © MATTEL INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. GETTY IMAGES.