My Barbie story begins on a quiet tree-lined neighborhood in Queens, New York in the late 1970s. My younger sister and I played with the neighborhood girls who had a real Barbie collection with the frills. They might have had the Dream house. I know we did not. My parents were immigrants from India; at […]
She’s back so we beeline to Barbie. After college plus a bonus year in Burlington, VT, my daughter has come “home”—in quotes because here is her launch pad to elsewhere, though she spends hours hanging her latest paintings and training pothos vines across her room. In my childhood rewind, Barbie makes confounding cameos. She’s too stiff-limbed to swivel into […]
I was 40 years old when my husband gifted me a Barbie Doll—a French Edition Collector Barbie dressed in a cancan dress with a pink and white striped bodice and black skirt, a pink feathered hat, and a black choker—a nod to my French heritage. It was the first and only Barbie I ever owned. […]
I did not take my daughters to see the Barbie movie because I wanted to see it for myself first. Untangling myself on a Saturday afternoon from the demands of home and family was maddening; my family was not thrilled about my little afternoon break. Driving to the theater, I questioned why doing something for […]
As a queer feminist sexuality researcher, I didn’t quite know what to expect when going to see the Barbie movie. People often perceive me as femme, but I don’t identify that way. My research delves into gender, beyond identity or physical gender expressions. I strive to unpack the multifaceted aspects of gender, investigating the distinctions […]
I bought a Barbie T-shirt from Hollister after the film’s opening week. I was at the register checking out while my son tried on hoodies in front of a mirror. My daughter, irritated in the mercurial, teenage way, looked at it and said, “Oh, you got it?” That balmy, summer night at the theatre while […]
Greta G. and Noah B., your poignant writing and directing did this 40-something mom proud; After years of feeling slightly shamed for loving her, I confidently utter her name again aloud. BARBIE, MY QUEEN, call it fate or pure sparkly luck that we meet once more; Last I saw your flawless face, pretty hair and […]
Contrary to the lyrics that swam through my head throughout middle school, I was not a Barbie girl, and I did not live in a Barbie world. I lived in a braces, glasses, back brace, greasy face world. By the time I was in seventh grade, it had been years since I’d played with Barbie […]
As a child, I had a small collection of Barbies that I played with on a regular basis: Totally Hair Barbie; Ocean Friend Barbie with baby Keiko, the whale; Teacher Barbie. I had gymnasts, ballerinas, and princesses. And while Barbie had already begun to scratch the surface of the hundreds of careers that she would […]
Even now, at 50 years of age, when I hear that a friend or colleague had a Barbie Dreamhouse as a child, the pull of envy in my chest cavity tugs ever so slightly. My cousin had one. I remember her never wanting to play with it when I was at her home, despite my […]
Much to her chagrin, I told my daughter, Zadie, I had to see the Barbie movie before deciding if she could watch it. Thankfully, Barbie’s brand of PG-13 is mostly just grown-up jokes that would sail over my 7-year-old’s head as she lost herself in a candy-colored wonderland, so we went together on a Saturday. […]