Choosing the White Doll Again — A #Woke Opinion of the Barbie Movie Campaign
“You don’t have to put shackles on the people if you can enslave them in the mind” — me, July 2023.
Before you roll your eyes at yet another article about the Barbie movie phenomenon sweeping headlines (for now), give me a chance to present a “stay woke” theory about the film’s insidious marketing campaign.
Husband and wife duo, Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Clark–the first and second African-Americans to earn a PhD in psychology from Columbia University, designed and led cutting-edge experiments in the 1940s to study the psychological effects of racism and segregation on black children.
The studies were known as “the doll tests”. Drs. Clark presented four dolls, all identical except for skin color, to kids aged three to seven years-old and asked them to choose the one they preferred.
Most of the children picked “the white doll and assigned positive characteristics to it. The Clarks concluded that prejudice, discrimination and segregation created a feeling of inferiority among African-American children and damaged their self -esteem.”
More explicitly, “the doll test” exposed self-hating beliefs that black children had internalized. The kids’ overwhelming selection of the white doll demonstrated a powerful fact. Racism is transcendent. It penetrates beyond words, images and actions; it seeps into the subconscious.
As young as toddlers, the supremacy of the white-skin doll: the embodiment of white beauty and white aesthetics, was already planted deeply into the psyche of African-American children.
Do you think these beliefs have been erased in the last eighty years, now that there has been racial integration and a proliferation of positive-images of African-Americans in the media? Cuz racism hasn’t disappeared.
Let’s go a bit further into our examination of white dolls, specifically the white Barbie doll.
My thoughts as a kid growing up in the ’80s about Barbie was that she sorta looked like a dressed up bimbo, a fancy version of Kelly Bundy that white ladies really wanted to look like. Back then, I clearly understood a woman could win in life and become rich and famous if she had big boobs, blue eyes, long, shiny blonde hair, a flat booty and an eager pouty mouth with bright pink lipstick.
Co-founder of Mattel, Inc, Ruth Handler originally designed the first Barbie in 1959 modeling it after the caricature of a high-class hooker from a German comic strip series.
The pre-Barbie doll was a gag toy commonly sold in tobacco shops for the amusement of men. Handler created her version to symbolize 1950’s glamour, in the fashion of icons like Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. Before Barbie, girls only had dolls in the form of babies–-to play with the fantasy of motherhood. Barbie offered an alternative dream as the first grown woman toy marketed to kids. For many decades, this premiere representation of the white doll promulgated a narrative of unattainable beauty that has proven to be damaging to girls of all races.
In 1999, it was estimated that up to 99% of girls aged 3-to-10 years-old own at least one Barbie doll. Additional research highlights that girls who played with Barbies were more susceptible to succumb to issues like eating disorders, low self-esteem, poor self-image, body dissatisfaction, body dysmorphia and self-mutilation.
When you take a look at today’s cosmetic and beauty industry, you realize how extensive the array of products exists; each one developed to alter, replace and transform just about every part of a woman’s body.
The idealized beauty of the bleached bomb-shell that Barbie represents still persists as an object of desire within the spectrum of African-American ideals too. An inspection of the number of women and girls who sport blonde wigs, weaves and false hair combined with the spreading popularity of those choosing to undergo the knife and suffer through injections to attain the coke-bottle body, reveals the latent influence of the original image of white Barbie– sixty-four years later and still going strong. Women literally are choosing to be plastic. Fake.
Zoe Weiner, a self-proclaimed “white woman without disabilities or any other intersectional layers of marginalized identity” reflects on her jolting experience of “being bombarded with images of Barbie’s blonde hair, blue eyes, and thin body in the form of actor Margot Robbie, who’s playing the iconic doll in the film.” Zoe expected a feminist variation of Barbie since that is what the movie appeared to be promising in its storyline.
Despite the impressive fact that over the decades, Mattell, Inc. has expanded in it’s offering of Barbie doll types “to include more than 175 dolls with varying skin types, hairstyles, and body types, as well as a doll with vitiligo, a doll with Down syndrome, dolls that use a wheelchair or a prosthetic limb, a doll with hearing aids, and a doll without hair”, it is no mistake that iconography associated with blonde, big-boobed, blue-eyed Barbie was selected to promote the movie.
The Barbie typeface, logo design, color scheme — the complete visual branding of the Barbie film strikes to the core of where our social coding has already been written.
The resurrection of this version of Barbie was designed by marketers to dig into a manufactured pain-point buried within the majority of girls and women: the belief that they are not desirable enough and must become more beautiful to be accepted and happy.
“Joy From Fear” author Marie Manly, PhD states, “when Hollywood makes a human being into the doll [and then inserts her person into a life-size box], it’s not a human-to-doll comparison any longer — it’s human-to-human… They immediately think, ‘If another human looks that good, I should be able to look that good, too.’” Why would movie-makers and toy-creators want to conjure up such self-effacing reactions through their products? Manly also asserts, ““toxic comparison,”…causes us to stop focusing on becoming the best versions of ourselves in favor of trying to be like someone else…If advertisers or the media can convince us that we need to be a certain type of individual, especially one that is unattainable, then they not only have our attention, but they also have our discretionary income.”
The lengths that marketers went to in promoting the Barbie movie cannot be dismissed nor downplayed. Black roller-skate culture found itself wrapped in the scheme as an enduring, niche segment of black culture that historically has incredible influence over trends adopted by mainstream African-American audiences.
Black skaters were instrumental in bridging the advancement of #Barbiecore to the African-American community and to the thousands who follow them online.
Pop-up roller-rinks opened in cities like Chicago and L.A., employing well-known black skaters who are influential on social media, to perform on roller-skates at Barbie-themed activations in the promotion of the film.
Followers, in turn, began creating their own unsponsored reels and photos under the Barbie movie’s branded theme colors, sporting costumes, accessories and hair and makeup styles to participate in the trend. Without any form of monetary compensation, everyday people jumped in to promote the Barbie movie, along with the implications of its classic iconography. This kind of UCG (User Generated Content) is the gold standard in any social media marketing campaign!
But is romancing and waxing nostalgic over Barbie really good for anyone’s mental health? What evidence of racism, sexism and manipulation can we see if we put our “woke-lenses” on? I’d advise all to be aware and intentional about the media we consume, the games we play and the messages we promote-actively and passively. I encourage people to talk about what feelings arise with Barbie’s latest spread of visibility for better and for worse, and to examine its historical impact. As much as we are prone to social conditioning, we always have choices–seemingly small, simple and personal ones–yet ours alone to make in how we maintain our mental landscape. It’s up to you. Choose wisely!
Sources:
“A Revealing Experiment-Brown V. Board and “The Doll Test” — www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/significance-doll-test/
“The Barbie Doll’s Not-for-Kids Origins” — https://time.com/3731483/barbie-history/
“If She’s Everything, Where Does That Leave Me? There Are Problems With Barbiemania” by Zoe Weiner– https://www.wellandgood.com/barbie-beauty-standards/
“This Photographer’s ‘Doll Test’ Reveals How Racism Works Through Visual Culture” by Charlotte Jansen — https://elephant.art/fabrice-monteiro-one-photographers-modern-doll-test-reveals-the-racism-inherent-in-visual-culture-16022021/
“Barbie Through the Ages” by BRYNN HOLLAND — https://www.history.com/news/barbie-through-the-ages
