Barbies and feminism revisited

For the record, I love my Barbies. I loved my Cinderella Barbie and my Ice Princess Barbie, and I remember begging my mom to take me to McDonald’s every week for six consecutive weeks just so I could collect all of those Happy Meal Barbies.

I think that it is appropriate that Barbie, the strong, impossibly beautiful woman of my youth, would celebrate her 50th birthday on the same day that strong, feminist blogger and author Jessica Valenti comes to campus.

Now, I can hear you saying, “Jessica is a feminist. Barbie is, well, a Barbie. Feminists hate Barbies.”

Point taken, but it is more complicated than that.

After all, even with all of her warped proportions, Barbie isn’t some subversive, male-designed notion of what a woman should or should not look like. In fact, the original Barbie was the brainchild of a woman – Ruth Handler. More importantly, in 1959, Barbie was a forward-thinking career woman when being that way was far from the norm.

Yet Jennifer Maher, Gender Studies professor, said Barbie’s career send the message that women can be astronauts and businesswomen, but only if they are 5-foot-9 and less than110 pounds.

Women’s success, Maher said, “wouldn’t be acceptable to mass culture if it wasn’t in this package.”

So too, I think with feminism. According to Valenti’s book, fewer than half of women identify themselves as feminists, when the dictionary only defines a feminist as one who believes in equality of the sexes.

Why are we all so reluctant to admit to thinking women are just as good as men?

Because, as Valenti argues, we are afraid of what the world tells us feminists look and act like. They are ugly. They are dirty. And as Rush Limbaugh famously said, feminism was created “to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”

So according to Limbaugh, women can be feminists as long as they are not unattractive, and according to society, women can be successful as long as they look like Barbie. The struggle of Barbies and feminism, it seems, is one in the same.

I don’t think Barbie and feminists have to be sworn adversaries. In fact, in a lot of ways I think Barbies and modern feminists are fighting the same battle, because both Barbie and young would-be feminists are too quick to take their cues from everyone else.

In the same way that we as a society are hesitant to come to terms with the fact that there can be astronauts who aren’t bombshells, we can’t seem to wrap our heads around the fact that feminists can be beautiful. And nice. And normal.

The sad part about all of this is that our generation of women believes that we are just as good as men, but we are too afraid to show it for fear of being dubbed a – gasp – feminist.

So today as we celebrate both Barbie and Valenti, one thing should ring clear: Women should not be afraid to be successful and outspoken on their own terms. Otherwise, both Barbies and feminism will have failed.