Barbie as a Sexual Archetype - Essay Example

Barbie as a Sexual Archetype For decades, there have been prominent sexual icons that have set an unrealistic bar for women as the ideal for the ‘perfect woman.’ Aside from cultural icons like Marilyn Monroe and Jessica Rabbit, Mattel’s most popular product, the Barbie doll, has stood the test of time as history’s most consequential sexual archetype. With that said, a close look will be taken into Barbie’s historical careers and campaigns to define how her image has been altered since her advent in 1959 and to explain the impact the Mattel doll has had upon sexual behaviors and expectations. To begin with, it is well known that Barbie’s history as a cultural icon began in 1959 when Ruth Handler realized that her daughter, Barbara, needed a better doll to play with. Barbie was an instant success and quickly became the masthead and promotional icon for toy maker Mattel. Part of Barbie’s allure is her ability to transcend generations as a primary toy. Hitting fifty-three years old this year, she is probably one of the oldest toys to still be as well embedded as she is as a familiar childhood toy, still being swept off the shelves by parents for their children today. Moreover, Barbie, so ingrained in the culture of America, has become a sexual and cultural archetype for two sides of the same coin: body consciousness and women empowerment. Truly, one “could regard Barbie as one of the most successful creative products by a woman and one of the most widely disseminated women’s artworks in Western European human history, thus ranking Handler alongside the Brontes and Jane Austen in her universal cultural currency and influence” (Peers 11). An important distinction, considering many people have become so inflamed by Barbie’s crimes against feminism that they forget Barbie was, in fact, created by a woman and celebrated by women for her ability to transcend gender inequality, despite her breast size. However, it is Barbie’s very image of physical perfection that has always been her greatest historical flaw. The blonde bombshell, Barbie looked absolutely perfect in every outfit, had a stunningly attractive boyfriend, Ken, and drove an expensive pink convertible. She was what every little girl wanted to be. Beautiful, slim, perfect body. In doll form, Barbie represents an absolute sexual icon, an archetype of femininity. Over the years, Barbie slowly became the symbolic ideal for women, one that had been ingrained in the minds of young girls throughout their childhoods—so much so that women have become influenced by this childhood idol to make changes to their own bodies in an attempt to look physically like the sexual bombshell. One woman, Cindy Jackson, has become famous for spending more than fifty thousand dollars on plastic surgery in her attempts to look like a real-life Barbie doll. On numerous talk shows, Cindy has told her tales of obsession with the sexual icon and the pressures she placed upon herself to strive for the same physical perfection. Cindy still strives for the perfection that Barbie represents, and her story is often presented as one of desperation, ultimate sadness, and as a cry for help that will only end when her reality becomes shattered by the imperfection inherent in being a human. Nearly anatomically correct, Barbie’s dimensions are that of a completely unrealistic woman. Standing at just about six feet tall, Barbie’s real-life measurements would put her as having a “39 inch bust, 18 inch waist, and 33 inch hips” (Slayen). Any real woman wouldn’t be able to survive with a body of this shape, being unproportionately thin and with breasts so large she would literally topple over. Even the makers of Mattel, after bending to the pressure of their sexual icon as being too unrealistic an ideal for women, starting re-vamping Barbie’s shape to that of a more conservative image. Over the years, Barbie’s dimensions changed drastically, her hips smoothed out, her waist gained a few inches, and she was dropped from what could be considered a large H bust size down to what looks like a more manageable C cup. Despite the archetype that Barbie represented, Mattel’s alternation of their masthead toy demonstrated a shift in body consciousness that was necessary for the times. Barbie isn’t the only icon representing inordinate body images for women—in the last decade fashion models have dropped to a scary-skinny, which was considered the new sexy by marketing campaigns. Ultimately, Mattel’s choice to give Barbie a more realistic body shape took the fire from the doll in an attempt to shift her status as an unrealistic obsession for young girls to an actual cultural archetype of feminist empowerment. Many “academic discourses…of dolls have generally begun and ended with Barbie. Sherrie A. Inness notes that most scholarship around dolls centers on ‘Barbie - the doll scholars love to bash’” (Peers 2). Barbie is the ultimate icon, the starting point for every argument about the impact that dolls hold on sexism and the ending point for the power that Barbie has come to represent to the feminist movement. The author goes on to explain “that the ‘bashing’ is misguided, suggesting…that baby dolls are more reductive of girls’ agency than Barbie” (2). Furthermore, this argument holds more weight than the argument that Barbie is the problem in women’s body consciousness. In fact, the baby doll is an icon that promotes complete and total gender inequality. A young girl is given a baby to raise; just like a real child. The baby cannot do anything other than—in some fancy versions—eat, cry, and make bowel movements. In the less advanced versions, the baby doll is simply a doll that can be clothed and little girls can pretend to take care of. The important distinction in this argument is that Barbie is nothing like her baby doll counterpart. Barbie is a career woman. Even her younger incarnations like Skipper, and friends Courtney and Tia, either went to school or followed a career path. In 2000, Life Size was produced starring Lindsey Lohan and Tyra Banks and featured a stereotypical Barbie—called Eve—who magically comes to life and must live in the not-so-perfect human world. Eve is like Barbie in every way: beautiful, talented, and surprisingly unrealistic in her expectations for how the world operates. Eve’s first mission is employment, which she fails at. Soon, she has a breakdown as she realizes that she isn’t the perfect specimen that she was in the land of Sunnyvale. Ultimately, Eve just wants to go home, where she can once again be the ultimate sexual archetype; though she returns slightly tainted by her human experiences of dashed hopes and conflicting emotions. Made for Disney audiences, this film denotes an important moment in Barbie’s historical timeline. By the year 2000, Barbie’s image had taken on many alterations. No longer was she an object of pure, focused perfection. Audiences had seen her evolve into different races, different body types, a symbolic representation of teen issues like pregnancy, and even a more realistic body-conscious woman; for example, smaller breasts, hips, and essentially a body type with more reasonable dimensions. On the other hand, aside from what her looks represent, Barbie was a revolutionary woman. She could literally be anything, from one day to the next. In fact, one way to define Barbie’s impact as an archetype in cultural and how she affects behaviors in society is to look at her career history. Aside from promoting an image that woman can do everything that men can do, Barbie does it better. She might have held a career as a nurse, but within two years, made the promotion to surgeon. Her resume might have seemed to be de-evolving when she took on careers like Miss America and revisited her first career choice of fashion model, but Barbie was so progressive that she could dance the line between womanly professions and excel in male-only (at the time, at least) professions in non-linear employment. Further, in order to understand how Barbie impacts culture, a close look will be taken into her career choices over the years. Many websites offer a historical timeline for the sexual icon, but perhaps ironically, the most encompassing list of dates was found in a slide-show on the Good Housekeeping website. To begin with, Barbie debuted as a fashion model in 1959. But by 1960, she was a career woman, entering the demanding world of fashion design. Within her first year as a doll for girls, Barbie had turned her career in fashion design into something that any girl could be proud of—Barbie was ruling the fashion world with her creativity and prowess. 1961 she was a registered nurse, and in 1963, she was an executive, spurred by the passing of the Equal Pay Act. That same year Barbie graduated from college. But life was too dull for Barbie, so she took to orbit in 1965 when she became an astronaut, four years before man had even landed on the moon. Barbie, at this stage, was ultimately an exceptionally progressive woman. Her career choices also marked a unique shift culturally, in that Barbie was taking careers considered mainly dominated by men and excelling at them. In 1973, Barbie became a surgeon, and then she took a detour for feminism and became Miss America in 1974. In 1976 she was an Olympic gold medalist, then jumped back to her original career of fashion model by 1977, when, apparently, it was once again in-vogue for women to dream of being in the fashion industry. In 1984, Barbie was an aerobics instructor, and in 1986, a rock star, but in 1989, Barbie made a dramatic change for the socially conscious and became a UNICEF ambassador. In 1993, she was an Army Ranger, four years before the movie G.I. Jane promoted women empowerment in predominantly male-only fields like the armed forces. In 1994, she was a pediatrician, in 1996 she was a veterinarian (after the premier of 101 Dalmatians, of course), in 1997, a dentist. In 1998, a NASCAR driver, and by 2002, she was an art teacher. In 2004, Barbie decided to run for president, in 2005, Barbie won American Idol, and in 2008 she was a prominent TV chef. Barbie’s timeline of career choices reads like an unfocused, inauthentic resume by a high-functioning sociopath. However, while many people might consider her nothing but a sexual stereotype whose only role is to ruin women’s expectations of themselves, they might be mistaken. Barbie is sexy and slightly unrealistically shaped, to be certain, but she is a mighty figure for female empowerment. While her resume is unfocused, Barbie is not a real person. She doesn’t have to go to college, train in her profession, and work in that role for the next ten years to be considered a valuable member of society. What she does is to offer a new ideology, one in which women can choose any profession and, if they work hard enough (Barbie is nothing if not a perfectionist), can ultimately achieve any of their goals. Overall, Barbie has opened up a new career world for women. She was an astronaut, a NASCAR driver, and an Army Ranger—all professions dominated by men, and all professions where women would be considered an inferior employee simply because they are not traditionally known to have the strength, coordination, or scientific ability as their male counterparts. In this, Barbie was revolutionary. For years, feminists had waved their banners for female empowerment, citing these very same arguments, but for years, the main and perhaps most important audience, young girls, wasn’t reachable. Traditional marketing techniques, especially those promoting gender equality, are lost on the younger audience because the message is too involved. For Barbie, however, little girls can look at her as role model and can see, on an intrinsic level as they dress their Barbie in her astronaut uniform, that their options are limitless. Works Consulted. Buffamonte, Christina. “Barbie’s Careers Through the Years.” Good Housekeeping. Web. . Life Size. Dir. Mark Rosman. Perf. Lindsey Lohan, Tyra Banks. ABC, Disney, 2000. Film. Peers, Juliette. The Fashion Doll: From Bebe Jumeau to Barbie. New York: Berg, 2004. Print. Slayen, Galia. “The Scary Reality of a Real-Life Barbie Doll.” Huffington Post. 4 April 2011. Web. < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/galia-slayen/the-scary-reality-of-a- re_b_845239.html>. Weber, Sandra, and Claudia Mitchell. That’s Funny, You Don’t Look like a Teacher! Interrogating Images and Identity in Popular Culture. London: Falmer Press, 1995. Print. Read More