Barbie’s new advertisement depicts little girls in various careers, beginning with the phrase “What happens when girls are free to imagine they can be anything?” Little girls are shown as professors, businesswomen, veterinarians, and other positions, and at the end it is revealed that the girls are playing with Barbie dolls and pretending to work in these various fields. With the airing of this commercial, I have heard many discussions on whether Barbie is empowering or harmful to young girls’ images.
On one hand, Barbie is created to be conventionally attractive and extremely thin. There is no variation in body type, and the main doll’s design is that of a white, blonde female. Some worry that Barbie enforces the wrong ideals of femininity and teaches girls to care about how they look. Some of Barbie’s outfits are thought to be too revealing, especially for a doll that is targeted at a very young age group. Some say that American Girl Dolls should replace Barbie as the iconic girls’ toy, seeing as they tend to be more diverse racially, less sexualized, and represent a more realistic body type. However, they are exponentially more expensive than Barbie dolls, and not every family can afford them.
On the other hand, Barbie was founded on the logo “We girls can be anything.” The phrases “If you can dream it, you can be it,” and “You can be anything,” have also been used in recent years. Barbie has been a doctor, an astronaut, an adventurer, and virtually every other career since the 1980s. Nothing is impossible for Barbie to do, and some think that the dolls enforce ideals of female empowerment and creativity in young girls. If they can envision themselves in positions of power, they will be more likely to work hard at achieving these positions.
The issue is not black and white. While I never paid much attention to my Barbie’s appearance as a child, I know little girls who talk about Barbie’s looks more than what she can do. However, the company appears to be making moves in the right direction in terms of racial and body diversity; the new fashionista line contains eight different skin tones and 14 different facial structures. Perhaps Barbie is not the ideal toy for little girls, but I think that the company is making a great deal of effort to teach its consumers that girls can be and do anything they set their mind to, which is far more than what other toy companies are doing in terms of female empowerment. For example, it is nearly impossible to find action figures of Black Widow from The Avengers or Rey from Star Wars, which enforces the idea that even if a woman exists in a movie, she is not important enough to exist in merchandise. I think that Barbie, although a bit problematic at times, has a good idea at its core and works to give its female consumers hope and drive in the world.
