Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Barbie has arrived…again
Last night we shelled out over $20 for the privilege of watching the Barbie movie. We were at Donna’s house and she has a big TV and surround sound so it was almost like being in the theater, only more comfortable. No popcorn, though, since I had reached my daily points limit. My companions were not as excited as I was to finally view something I vowed not to watch – ever. That is until my daughter enthusiastically recommended it as a must watch. It’s a parody, she informed me, and definitely has a feminist edge to it. She was sure I would appreciate the message. She was right.
Growing up, I missed the whole Barbie phase that my daughter went through 40 years later. The Barbie shtick was started by a pretty remarkable woman named Ruth Handler, an inventor and a business woman. She co-founded the Mattel toy company with her husband in 1945 and was its first CEO from 1945 to 1975. In 1956 she was traveling in Germany and came across an adult-figured doll named Lilli. Up until then, dolls were mostly crafted to look like babies, so the idea of an adult figurine was new to her. She bought several of them and gave one to her daughter, Barbara, and took the rest to Mattel. She must have thought through the possibility of introducing something similar to the United States. In March of 1959, Mattel introduced the first Barbie doll at the International Toy Festival in New York City. The rest is history.
Barbie’s inventor created a toy legacy that extends through today. However, in 1975 she left Mattel under a cloud. The Securities and Exchange Commission had investigated the company’s business practices and in 1978 she was charged with the production of falsified financial reports. She paid a hefty fee after pleading no contest and was given 2,500 hours of community service. So much for business ethics. Nevertheless, Barbie, Ken, and their many “companions” remain staples of Mattel’s business.
I learned all this after Rhea Perlman was introduced in the movie as Ruth Handler, Barbie’s inventor. I googled her and learned a bit about this commercial pioneer. Ruth preceded the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company by almost 30 years. Katherine Graham became the first lady leader of a major company (the Washington Post) in 1972. As of 2017, there are only 53 women top bosses out of 500 CEO’s. As an aside, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were campaigning for President, a woman at a party told me that we would never elect a Black President. I disagreed. In my opinion at the time, and now, we would elect a Black man before we would ever elect a woman to that office.
Back to the movie. I thought it was cleverly done and visually attractive. It was definitely satirical in nature and there were a few laugh out loud moments. Pink was the prevalent color, of course.( I thought back on Jackie’s bedroom with its pink wallpaper that went up in 1987 and stayed until I sold the house around 2007. That’s a long time to sleep in a pink room, but it did go along with the Barbie Dreamhouse and the little collection of Barbie stuff.) Anyway, the beginning of the movie is all happy happy joy joy as Barbie strolls through her perfect pink world. Ken is portrayed as a bit of a bumbling lover wanna-be. All the other Kens are second-class citizens in Barbie World, while all the Barbies are surgeons, Nobel Prize winners, Supreme Court justices, and so on.
At one point, Barbie and Ken segue into “the Real World”. Suffice it to say that they are both caught by surprise by the male-dominated environment. Ken is elated and Barbie is depressed at the difference between Barbie World and the world the rest of us live in. Our world includes male domination in so many forms – all the way from “mansplaining” to the awful practice of Female Genital Mutilation. According to the World Health Organization, “it is estimated that 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM in the countries where the practice is concentrated. In addition, every year an estimated 3 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM, the majority of whom are cut before they turn 15 years old.”
FGM is not a topic broached in the Barbie movie. I bring it up to emphasize what a long way we have to go to achieve gender equality around the globe and here at home. The movie may be a light-hearted look at inequality, but as a feminist, I can appreciate the message.