“Mom!” My daughter shows the top ten best viewed movies on Netflix. The adults rank eighth Barbie and the Dancing Princesses. The streaming service was due to offer a series of Barbie movies on April 1, and I assured my daughter it was a joke. Because Barbie, wasn’t that a completely outdated image of female beauty, a phenomenon we had dealt with for years? Not so.
In 1959 Barbie, Barbara Millicent Roberts, was introduced by the American Mattel. In 2006, three Barbies were sold every second worldwide, according to the manufacturer. In 2014, sales plummeted, but today Barbie is back with the best numbers in twenty years. Driving force? Barbiecore. Fake eyelashes, tack nails, candy pink: Gen Zers and millennials are embracing the bimbo aesthetic. Pop stars and lgbtq icons such as Lil Nas X also swear by it. But, is it all right? fierce?
Controversies
Barbie is a feminist enigma: on the one hand she stands for the independent woman with her own career, money and (above all) wardrobe. On the other hand, she is the subject of controversy, not least because of her unrealistically slim shape. In 1965, Barbie’s scales stood at 150 pounds. If she were human, she would not have enough fat mass to menstruate (study UCH, Helsinki). Moreover according to research that Barbie especially young children of five to eight can lead to a negative self-image.
Those scientific studies have never led to fundamental changes. There are a few ‘chubby’ variants, Barbie’s waist is a few millimeters wider, but essentially she hasn’t changed. Just when I thought a new generation younger than my daughter would remain Barbie-free, the doll is taking revenge with its soaring sales and wooden hit movies. Yes, it’s the same Barbie, but do we see her the same way?
If she were human, she would not have enough fat mass to menstruate
Young generations don’t seem to mirror Barbie, but use it shamelessly. For them, the doll is a coat rack on which to hang ideals of emancipation and diversity, values that have little to do with good Babs from 1959. An appropriation that sometimes resembles retaliation. The Barbie cliché is ruthlessly used, the imitation so grotesque that the idolization might as well be a form of Barbie bashing.
Beautiful cries
Next summer we will be treated to one brand new Barbie moviedirected by Greta Gerwig (from the acclaimed Lady Bird). Images of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling on fluorescent yellow skates promise diehard Barbiecore. In anticipation of that, I watched the dancing princesses with my daughter and yes, we were blown away. The 2006 film was made uninspired and outdated. We didn’t look at Barbie as an example, but as kitsch. In my case, with a touch of nostalgia.
Still, Barbie’s comeback has something dubious. Is Barbiecore the revenge of or the revenge of Barbie? After all, under all that bright pink tulle, under those beautiful slogans and added layers of meaning, the ‘core’ still hides a blonde bimbo who mainly wants to be beautiful and want to tie her Ken. Not a transverse message, but an image of beauty and female aspiration that seems to have hardly changed in the core in almost sixty-five Barbie years. That makes Barbiecore a masquerade that is both liberating and affirming.