Barbie copied: A hundred years ago, the designer Elsa Schiaparelli designed dresses in “shocking pink” and painted giant lobsters on evening gowns. If you lament the pinkization of the world that hit the world like a flamingo bomb this year as a result of Mattel and Greta Gerwig’s successful puppet film move, you would have to start there. (Or even earlier: According to National Geographic, pinks are the oldest shades in the world that people used to color themselves, their lips and their clothes.)
The big sexy sister color of baby pink has never gone away, just like the fashion doll itself. Decades ago, sensible people rightly pointed out the connection between her unrealistic proportions and the increase in body disorders among young girls – but all of this would probably be the same without Barbie same mess. And Gerwig’s plastic nightmare, ingeniously positioned between bandwagonism and anarchy, was more likely to be watched by the mothers of the potential puppeteers, who were already caught up in their body image: the largest group of the millions of filmgoers worldwide are women over thirty (almost a quarter of whom have not been to the cinema for years were, let alone in a film by a female director).
What does the ending of “Barbie” mean?
With the Barbie film, they also saw a story of self-empowerment that lacked the usual heteronormative happy ending. Although the last scene of the film is interpreted differently by critics: some complain bitterly that Barbie only goes to the gynecologist so that she can reproduce and thus experience the role of mother, others are happily certain that Barbie wants to be sensitized underneath her body, to finally have sufficient sex with strangers.
This year, the Barbie year 2023, should be read as a liberation rather than a back-to-the-doll movement. Barbie (and with it the old-fashioned society that exists according to strict gender guidelines) is not “back”. Instead, she is hopefully slowly but surely morphing into a more gender-conscious, diverse, inclusive and realistic version of herself.
It doesn’t matter what colors she wears. Because neither pink nor grey, neither high heels nor Birkenstocks are able to adequately represent the state of gender equality: the bottom line is that it’s just a matter of color and fashion preferences. Anyone who is upset that the major corporation Mattel has made even more money from the successful film is right. However, this year the family-owned company Birkenstock hopefully (and comfortably) went public.