My Barbie dolls from childhood were pampered like real human beings who were somehow always in our house to hang out with me or blankly heed whatever I command them to do: tend to the kitchen set they have, give their poodle a bath on the pink bathtub (which is partnered with a mini shower that squirts out water when you press a button from the little water dispenser, or play dress up and change their clothes with the other Barbies at bay. I forgot how many dolls I had back then, I lost count. Like girls my age before, I also loved performing ritualistic changes on them, verging on “surgery” because I wanted to play doctor, or “salon” trips that would eventually need some washing for their fragile China-strand hairs.
I didn’t grow up hating my dolls, nor Barbie herself. Not even the brand. In fact I owe most of my childhood years to it, and without which would have been bleaker considering how my family life panned out for me. I didn’t have the semblance of desire to become like her, or the dream of having her blue eyes and straight hair. Maybe I could say that I wanted to have my own Dreamhouse, or the Cher Horowitz-esque wardrobe choices.
When the Barbie Career Dolls came out, I was ecstatic. I had one ultimate dream back then as a child, and that was to be a doctor. If I remember clearly, the Doctor Barbie looked stunning. Donning her white robe and a tiny stethoscope around her neck, the look embodied a medical professional complete with her clipboard (physician’s clinic sold separately). I didn’t get to have that one, though; I never asked my parents to buy me one, not even the other “Careers.” I just didn’t find the need to have one. Instead, I still gunned for the other Barbies, the one I considered more me or those from the normal series. I still didn’t know then what “self-concept” meant or what knowing yourself is but in picking which Barbie dolls I should own somehow dictated that already. I wanted the ones wearing summer dresses, those that look like they’re going to the mall, or just the casual ones that do not play any “role.” In present day lingo, this Barbie is normal. Local, even.
If Barbie manifested a certain type of life that the thousand versions she portrayed in the many iterations Mattel introduced in the market all these years, then conversely, it also launched a thousand archetypes of girlhood–and womanhood, eventually–that many young people subscribed to, that I subscribed to. Suddenly it became less about acquiring a profession that she was marketed as, but more about the growing want to become better than her and the plasticine ephemera that came with the boxes she was sold in, to kill whatever stereotype her birth in the toy sphere brought. If she can become a lawyer, then I, too, can lead a life that I have authority over. Barbie’s made by businessmen; I’m raised by the internet.
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| Photo by Carlijn Jacobs |
There’s a double-edged sword somewhere here, the way Barbie is both role model and competition to me. Growing up, I didn’t have a sense of self-image, or what I should do to feel satisfied enough to have confidence as a young girl. But I was insecure, and that’s that. I didn’t have the desire to have the same body as hers (which is, a millionth time we’re reminded now, is unrealistic and physically threatening to try to achieve). But what grew in me was the desire to be just like the other girls who embodied a Barbie-like everything. Svelte bodies, a variety of clothes to choose from on the daily, a nice Malibu pink apartment that has all the pretty things a girl like daydream of: quality furniture, cute pets, delicious food.
Buy, get tired, buy another
In my adult years from age 21 to present, I built a certain relationship with the objects I’ve acquired over the years. The feeling of impulsively buying something I don’t need vehemently elicited a feeling of superiority over my complaints and other personal woes. Going out for coffee or eating out at restaurants with friends also evoked a similar feeling of authority, something Barbie couldn’t do because, obviously, she is a doll. But there was some resentment that came with it, me vicariously living through socializing and buying shit. I felt like I'd made it when I bought my first fridge, my first couch, my first bed frame and mattress, my first cabinet, my first bookshelves, my first work desk, my first MacBook Pro. The bond I shared with these material things I’ve acquired borders on intimacy sometimes, but there was also a resentful version of me hiding somewhere deep, someone who has had moments of regret for investing so much money on furniture that she didn’t feel anything when she had to let go of some before moving. It’s not like I was forced to let them go, though. The circumstance just required a bit of “sacrifice”; it, however, felt like a breath of fresh air when I no longer saw them within my periphery for the past five months.
I didn’t so much model myself as a Barbie or as someone who had her life together, someone who embodied feminine prowess. There were girl power moments when I felt more free than I normally do, sure, but it felt stunted, like something big is barring me from feeling a hundred percent content with whatever I have now. Somehow the intimacy I felt towards the objects I acquired when I started living alone felt like movie set props, like the past two years had been a farce with the fake fridge, fake couch, fake bed, fake cabinet. I lived in peace away from the people who tormented me daily but the oasis I built for myself over the years now seems to be a reminder of how trivial it all was. I cannot grasp the feeling now but looking back on it, all I feel is being imprisoned. I was coaxed by my own desires of being independent so much that the bliss I felt was manufactured and scripted. I can’t explain why I felt so, and why it’s been a recurring feeling for so long now.
Seeing TikTok flourish with influencers who vlog about how their day went or what they eat in a day didn’t help either. There was a moment when I began aspiring to be like those girls who seemed to have their lives together just because their mornings were as productive as I dreamed of: a morning self-care routine with skincare brands that seemed to always work for them, a clip of their Nespresso machine spurting out luxurious liquid gold, and finally, eating an avocado with egg toast on a white ceramic plate speckled with black ink blots. It crushed me, having thought of many ways to belong in the “That Girl” trend on TikTok, totally disregarding the fact that it’s not fucking serious. I would’ve droned on about how the internet fed my social insecurities but that’s a conversation for another day. Point being, Billie Eilish really struck a chord when she liltingly asks everyone what she was made for, because I, too, am a teenager in her late-20s who wants to do something but couldn’t even name one thing to start with. My pseudo-corporate girlie vlogs on TikTok are neatly edited, but deep down all I feel is dread because I feel I’m still not doing enough, and that I should always be this and more. The sense of self I am carefully gathering through every video I post of me recording my outfit is like a cry for help, for self-validation just so I could always remind myself that everyone’s on a different path and that me having my own is already enough in itself. But it’s always easier said than done.
Maintaining Barbie and her reputation
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie'' carved it out perfectly when Margot Robbie’s character started questioning everything she came to know in the Barbie world. Her own Dreamhouse didn’t feel like home a day after she thought about dying. She can’t walk properly on her shoes, and her shower’s temperature tends to irritate her. The movie began with the focus on the ultra-glam and bright world of Barbieland, the pink-everything world where Barbies of all kinds, sizes, and color are engaged in what their ‘versions' require them to do. There’s a lawyer Barbie, a doctor Barbie, a mermaid Barbie, even a pregnant Barbie–everything. Indeed anyone can be anything. It’s when the Barbieland continuum gets disrupted when Barbie starts dealing with reality–in this case Los Angeles.
She then started doubting her own body, the perpetually glorified image in media as having the perfect dimensions. There was a part when Helen Mirren ascertained that Robbie might not have been the best choice to portray insecurity in a woman. She definitely wasn’t, but the movie articulated her “struggles” later on, which was met with a warm realization that she’s just like us. Suddenly even her house and the community she shared with the other Barbies had this coarseness to it. It looked like it was still hers, but marred by edges that used to be soft corners. And like clockwork, her insecurities morphed into fear, fear turned to despair. The Barbie who used to bleed confidence, who was so sure of herself and the environment she lived in, is now forced to confront her reality and what, or who, lies on that plane.
Cinched between the realities of an ongoing bout for who deserves more rights than who are Weird Barbie and Barbie. Weird Barbie acted as sage to Barbie’s growing concerns within her sphere: cold showers, burnt waffles, feet flattening, cellulite. Weird Barbie has gone through the same thing before too, only that she seemed to be unable to transform herself back to “normalcy”–she stayed weird, deformed, and defamed. Her whole get-up says it all, compared to Barbie’s bubblegum pop wardrobe frothing with attractive colors that never go out of season. Weird Barbie wears the same colors too, only in patchworked manner with colors in less-than aberrant placement. It’s as if Weird Barbie struggled through so much, so in return she’s like the god of decisiveness. For the price of wisdom and personality, you must deal with the cruel cards of fate, while the sheltered Barbie must stay prim and femme so those who struggle must have someone to look up to and aspire to be. This only tells me that women are perpetually separated in two archetypes, if not oscillating between being insane and being stable. There can only be one, always.
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| Photo by Carlijn Jacobs |
But Weird Barbie, no matter how many times we eye her choice of appearance compared to the intentional Chanel-clad Barbie, is all of us without the glare of the public eye, most importantly our own eyes. We sell ourselves in palatable chunks of Instagram stories and posts so the Weird Barbie barely shows on the surface, lest we are perceived as struggling pill poppers–and I’m guilty of partaking in this criminal vocation that is self-effacing. All the pent-up frustration I had growing up due to being bullied for my looks can now be erased, in exchange for my sanity and my healthy relationship with food. What used to be an arm’s length rule for material things turned into an obsession that ruefully blinded me of what really constitutes contentment and what made me feel full. How do you pull yourself back up from that kind of self-destruction, something so complex, something that almost all people can relate to because they had a rough childhood? Can a movie heal that part of us that stopped functioning after a certain event forced us to conclude that buying something or weighing less and less by the week can make us forget about the horrors?
When Barbie was told she can be anything she wants to be, I wanted to scream. I didn’t have that choice like she did, but the movie still felt all the more like a quiet hug after three months of ruminating on it since it came out. I still find myself going back to that part where Barbie sees an old woman and spends a minute looking at her, telling her how beautiful she was. Of all the parts that had a pull on me, that one, next to the montage of women doing things that made them happy, could be one of my favorites. Women having choices and being happy with the cards they’re dealt with is such an alien concept that being shown the bare minimum enjoyment on screen is already so momentous in itself.
The face of ‘this or that’
There were a lot of moments of reckoning for Barbie in the movie, most particularly her jump from being the Barbieland muse to being just her, Barbara, a woman who chose to have a life of making ends meet to find herself. But the unintentional exclusion of Weird Barbie as an end-all and be-all for most, if not all, Barbies appeared as a preclusive framing of women as the perpetual good egg and bad egg. I say unintentional because her arc ended in her den, acting as an ornament of the pseudo-feminist revolution hatched by the other Barbies trying to straighten out the wrinkle that is patriarchy and horses in the fabric of Barbieland. Whatever happened to her, we cannot decide. Does she remain a learned yet struggling being in her world? It’s as if the Weird Barbie was vilified via banishment from Barbieland–and it’s not even consequential; her “owner” did too much ruinous experimenting with her, garnering her too rusty for the bubblegum world of Barbieland.
If the Barbie movie represented a caveat while in the throes of womanhood, it’s how much Barbie’s tears enshrined itself as a currency in her world. Her first encounter with crises began at her own home, which she felt warranted a cryfest in front of the other Barbies. This isn’t to say that her outburst was her throwing a fit, nor was it bad even if it fell on that classification. But much of her “suffering” in the movie was framed as a vulnerability vis-a-vis her birthright as the “main” Barbie, rather than bodying the culpability of her disruptive thought process that highly involved her whole community. We are forced then to reconcile with a band-aid-solution monologue about womanhood which in itself also felt skewed towards a critique that feels regurgitated.
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| Photo by Carlijn Jacobs |
I enjoyed the privilege of having access to basic needs like food, shelter, and education. I was able to have a choice, somehow, despite having to struggle for the things I am reaping right now. But there will always be Barbies who are going to be more comfortable with their lives, whose tears can solve every crisis they have thanks to the less-than glamorous Barbies surrounding them, teaching them a thing or two about numerous realities. I’ve thought about this hard enough but the movie, though having all intents and purposes to bring forward a story about female triumph, felt like a navelgazing project, if not God-complex. I loved the movie. I would want to watch it again for comfort. But it’s now less personal in a way that it milks the woman as a fragile media darling, not as a confidante or model of the selfsame bravery translated by Weird Barbie’s experienced panache. Are women doomed to be compared in all art forms for all eternity? Am I meant to always view someone as a lesser woman than I am because I used their story as a motivation for me to be better at my career, finances, and relationships? Is that justice?
The Barbies of my life while growing up were all women I wanted to be, in the many stages of my life. But I’m not so sure if I ever fit the mold of these women who made it look so easy, getting and living the lives they lived. Somehow, there will always be something missing. I want this Filipina businesswoman’s condo unit with boutique mid-century furniture. I want this influencer’s wardrobe teeming with timeless pieces that I know would also look good on me. I wish to have this TikToker’s makeup collection that could be likened to a shop building up in her BGC condo unit’s living room. This lowkey vlogger’s book collection, plus her niche set of Bottega bags, plus her random travels to Europe with her friends and boyfriend, plus this Instagram model’s body and her bikini collection, everything. And it all makes me feel bad, the way I’m desiring for everything to be mine. And it’s not wrong. It’s just tiring, when your life closely resembles a mortgage you’re required to keep under your name through your purchasing power as a woman because if not, then who am I?
Maybe what constitutes being a woman sprawled with the blanket of capitalism over her is the endless search for contentment and validation through the many lenses she’s viewed with by the varying sets of people she meets in her lifetime. Because no matter what we do there will always be comparisons not just with our male counterparts, but also with the women who are doing more, and those who are doing less. And it’s a weakening thought, to realize that while we are bound with these circumstances until we reach our deathbeds, we are also completely tethered with the throes of capitalism’s affective touch on our fantasies, never mind if it includes spending money or not. I’m not really sure now if “Barbie” really disrupted something; to me it’s more like a feminism skewed towards an exclusionary ideology that only caters to the educated, to those who have access to the ever-changing models of popular culture, a.k.a. those who have WiFi and smartphones.
While “Barbie” was a tremendously entertaining watch, packed with social commentary disguised as comedy and the whatnot, its social critique begs to be more sincere and original. Gerwig wished for the film to push back on the presently hazy state of Hollywood for women, yes, but we cannot disregard the fact that “Barbie” is from the same vehicle that runs over women from minorities–a self-explanatory fork in the road.
I’ve gone on a tangent here, really. I was only ever meant to write a wistful piece about the years I spent with my Barbie dolls, but it turned into an unsolicited rant about the two Barbies I’m trying to nurse inside me.
