Barbie may be turning 50 today, but the doll it was modeled on, its doppelganger, is actually a bit older than that: she’s almost 54. And everybody has forgotten her birthday. Poor Lilli!
Ruth Handler saw a Bild Lilli doll while vacationing in Switzerland with her kids, snatched up three of them, and brought them back to California, determined to copy the doll and sell it on the American market. Little did she know that Bild Lilli was actually a gag gift, a novelty item, sold in bars and tobacco shops and meant for an adult public. It was the sort of present men would give each other with a wink – a toy meant to titillate. Men would place Bild Lilli dolls in their cars – on their dashboard or hang them from their rearview mirrors, on a little swing.
Lilli’s history goes back a bit further. Before being manufactured as a gag gift, she had been a character in a comic strip created by Reinhard Beuthien for the German tabloid Bild-Zeitung. All her stories revolved around fashion & appearance, staying out late, and sleeping with old, rich men. In short, Lilli was an unabashedly sexual, proud gold-digger.
Barbie kept the looks – down to a tee – but instead of flaunting her sexuality, she focused on looks and shopping – something far more “innocuous” for parents.
Now, watch these two videos:
Talking Barbie – 1968 (already discussed on this blog)
Another recent achievement by Barbie – which was not discussed by Mattel? This year, she won a prestigious TOADY award! Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader won the Worst Toy of the Year Award – handed to her by the CCFC, the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood. Read more about it here.
According to this story on NPR, Mattel recently opened a six-story Barbie flagship store in Shanghai, China, called “House of Barbie”. In addition to building custom-made Barbie dolls, customers can also get beauty treatments like facials, and indulge in Barbie-inspired cocktail drinks with clever names such as Barbietini, Glamourpolitan, and Pink-Me-Up. (Older customers, one hopes).
Barbie is known for being yellow-haired and blue-eyed, and thus, unless you have severe myopia, she looks antithetical to every woman born in the world’s highest populated country (1.3 billion strong). So Mattel wisely created a special Barbie for the occasion, with “pan-Asian likeness.” (Never mind that 99% of the dolls and artwork in the store show the classic blonde Barbie look). We don’t care. We wanna shooooop!
Now, I truly hope there has been a mistake and this is not the close-up of the so-called “Pan Asian Barbie”:
Because her eyes don’t look the least bit Chinese. Well, unless Mattel was sneakily suggesting that Chinese women should get eyelid surgery to “open up” their eyes and look more like Caucasian women. But nooooooooo. That couldn’t be! You can just imagine Barbie saying, “Little Chinese girl: you look nothing like me! How come?”
At any rate, NPR reports:
The lure of the China market was one reason that Mattel chose Shanghai for its first House of Barbie. It’s aggressively pursuing developing markets, such as Eastern Europe, Russia and India, which aren’t already Barbie-saturated. But when deciding where to place the House of Barbie, Shanghai beat other contenders — including London, Paris, Milan, New York and Los Angeles — because of its strong cross-generation reaction to the doll and the brand.
“There was an amazing connection to Barbie’s values,”
What? Shopping? The love for the color pink? The pursuit of a size 00 with D cup breasts?
Dickson said. “Barbie in this culture represented a world of possibilities for girls and for women. She’s had amazing careers, she has the cars, she has the plane, she has the boyfriend — and she looks fantastic doing it.”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Ok, ok. I understand. You need to work your butt off trying to become a president, an astronaut or a doctor, but you better look perfect doing it! Otherwise something’s missing.
As it is illustrated in this old Barbie ad:
Perfectionism (looks, career, personal life) = most potent weapon used against girls & women, as it sets them up for a life of dissatisfaction and craving.
Chinese girls – now, you can do it too! BDD and all! Yay!
Now, for the mommies out there, I highly recommend reading this report by Girls Inc., called the “Supergirl Dilemma.”
Girls say they are under a great deal of stress today. Three-quarters (74%) of girls in grades 9-12, over half of girls (56%) in grades 6-8, and just under half of girls (46%) in grades 3-5 say they often feel stressed (describes them “somewhat” or “a lot”).
When girls get caught up in the quest to be “supergirls,” they are less likely to feel confident in themselves and celebrate what truly makes them amazing. As adults who care about girls, it’s up to us to help girls confront the pressure they feel to be perfect.
Judd Apatow’s funny boys — Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Jonah Hill — “recreate” the sorta-famous Scarlett Johansson/Keira Knightley nude photo shoot for Vanity Fair this month, with Paul Rudd playing the role of the creepily lurking Tom Ford. Except, of course, they’re wearing nude body stockings. Because, of course, we wouldn’t really want to objectify them. It’s supposed to be funny, see.
The post’s author goes on to discuss the issue of female comedians and the debate on whether or not women can be funny. And the issue that some celebrated female comedians, who have recently become household names and received lots of acclaim (Tina Fey in primis) have actually been featured in Vanity Fair, wearing next to nothing and snapped in overtly sexy poses.
The post concludes:
So that leaves us with this: Men being objectified is so silly as to be hilarious, but it’s better if funny women are also hot. Or maybe it just leaves us to conclude that Vanity Fair has a lot of conflicted feelings to work out in magazine therapy. What do you think? Would you like to see the Apatow crew baring all? Would it be as funny a parody if female comedians did it?
I had yet to write about the issue of female comedians, so this is the perfect opportunity. Something that terribly saddened me was the recent Vanity Fair issue (yeah, again, same culprit) with Tina Fey on its cover.
What does a hardworking, funny, brilliant – yet average looking – woman have to do to be taken seriously, get better and better assignments, and eventually be openly embraced by the mainstream? But of course, she needs a makeover!
Before:
And then, after the makeover is complete, she needs to show off her Most Important Assets.
After:
Could the Tina Fey of the “before” photos ever been featured on the cover of Vanity Fair, just as she was?
Pregnant pause.
Think.
Did it take you more than a nanosecond to come up with the answer “of course not”?
Because that is the obvious truth.
Because a female comedian cannot be appreciated just for her brains.
On the other hand, these two beauties (first on the far left and the guy between Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd) got a golden ticket to a Vanity Fair cover:
The Illusionists is one year old this week. So many positive things have happened since its start… Which I will write more about soon…
For the time being, here is a walk down memory lane: one of the first blog posts about the film project, when I had yet to start the bulk of the research…The amusing thing about it, is the fact I have met/spoken with almost all of the women mentioned in that post – who have all been incredibly supportive of the project, generous in their offer to help, and a delight to talk with.
Where am I today? I’m about to complete the second draft of the film’s script and things on the development side are also looking up.
The other big announcement of the day? I’m seriously thinking about starting a non-profit organization – aimed at enhancing women’s self-image, and shedding light on issues such as wage gap, and gender inequality.
One step at a time. But as Lao Tsu wisely said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
What do you do when the home economy is in a slump and sales are stagnating? But of course, expand to foreign markets! New emerging markets = untapped resources.
And so, here we are: Middle Eastern and Chinese women are the next targets of the beauty myth, as beauty companies introduce them to new products, making them understand the capital importance of fighting against – gasp! – evil wrinkles and having glossy hair.
Most vicious thing about it all: the deception – and the fact a Dubai dermatologist would lie through his teeth. Wonder how much he was paid by Pond’s.
Most vicious thing about it all: if the images below are taken from the actual ads, the biggest problem is that not a single model is Chinese. They all look pretty Caucasian to me. And all the chatter about self-empowering women. You are trying to sell shampoo!
Illusionists, step aside. Let’s focus on some “realists.”
In this clip, prominent bloggers discuss the effects pregnancy had on their bodies and their self-image. Their words are surprisingly candid, especially in a cultural climate that idolizes motherhood and stresses the importance of “getting your body back ASAP” (see this previous post about US Magazine’s obsession with new moms and dieting).
[The] women who people today’s romantic comedies seem to have three main obsessions. There’s shopping, of course, as seen in Confessions of a Shopaholic and Sex and the City. There’s babies, as witnessed in Baby Mama, Juno and Knocked Up. And there’s marriage, which was front and centre of the noxious recent release Bride Wars, featuring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway fighting over their dream wedding – described by Purkiss as “what some drunken bozo who never got a date in high school thinks women are like”. Marriage is also at the centre of Made of Honour, License to Wed, The Wedding Date, The Wedding Planner and 27 Dresses.
[...]
Now, at a time when 70% of women are in the workforce, career women in romantic comedies are generally either portrayed as incompetent, cruel, or both. Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald, an academic at the University of Kent and an expert on romantic comedies, says that she finds it “quite insulting that a career woman now is something that is so frowned upon. You see depictions of women who are supposedly at the top of their game, yet they can’t walk down a corridor in a white suit without pouring coffee on themselves or walking into a bush. The films are not very subtly saying ‘yes, they may be at the top in their jobs, but actually what they really need is a man. In fact, a husband.’”
Hollywood is monstrously, demonstrably sexist. It’s sexist in a way that must make industries like construction and engineering take off their hard-hats and whistle with admiration. According to the Celluloid Ceiling review, of the top 250 films of 2007, women made up just 15% of key behind-the-scenes roles. They were just 6% of the directors, and just 2% of cinematographers.
In front of the camera things appear to be slightly better: you can see women, they’re all over the place. But actually, with all those male directors, directing films about men, the women really don’t get much of a look in. Of the 6,833 speaking characters in the films nominated for the best picture Oscar between 1977 and 2006, only 27.3% were female (only one woman director has ever been nominated for an Oscar: Sofia Coppola, in 2003, the same year that Fernando Meirelles was nominated for City of God without his female co-director, Katia Lund).
In Alison Bechdel’s cartoon strip Dykes to Watch Out For, the character Mo explains that she only watches films in which 1) there are two female characters, who 2) have a conversation which is 3) not about men.
Think of your top 3 favortite films… Do they pass the test?
Now, I truly hope there has been a mistake and this is not the close-up of the so-called “Pan Asian Barbie”:
