When I consider the qualities a mother should have, my own mother serves as the template: she’s supportive, nurturing, still an open ear and a fount of gentle wisdom as I navigate my twenties. She embodies the warmth and comfort that society has long associated with—and demanded of—mothers, but not fathers. But when I read […]
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 […]
Dear Baby Boy, Carrying you unborn into the cinema to watch Barbie, I was captured by the atmosphere of anticipation and adoration in the audience. Knowing nothing about the film, I imagined I was there to be entertained, take the weight off my pregnant feet, and leave behind reality for an afternoon. How naïve I […]
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 […]
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 […]
I didn’t appreciate Barbie again until I had my own daughter. She is fierce and strong, kind and intelligent. She is thoughtful, beautiful, and fun. Yes, you can be all of those things, girls! But the Barbie movie gave voice to the reality that many of us feel, which is that being all these things […]
I sat down to write after the sugar haze from the cinema cleared, but before all my thoughts were lost in the everyday shuffle. There were moments in the Barbie movie that made me laugh or feel delighted, but overall, I left feeling queasy. I reject the idea that in a completely female-empowered world (Barbieland), […]