Know Your Own Bias by Your Barbie

Barbie bias through the years

If we are raised in human communities we have bias. Few of us are raised by she-wolves or Lion kings in the forest, especially since we eliminated most of those things.

It is all too easy to judge others and find what they lack.

It is much, much harder to see the things we are lacking.

We all live by the codes we learn that assure us we are right and good. But these change over time. One example is Barbie.

She has changed a great deal in just sixty-four years.

There is a new Barbie movie coming out. It looks fun. Obviously, with Barbie’s original anatomy, you would never find a rib on her hard body to poke, but the film I believe, will poke us a lot in the mid-century of the last few decades.

The first Barbie was modeled after a German Sex joke toy. Not for children. She was tall, thin, smoking hot, leggy, with blonde hair, and blue eyes. Big hair. Red lips. She was a swimsuit model.

Some adults, and especially body-conscious young women were not crazy about the impossibly busty, wasp-waisted creature who would never, ever have to be told to smile to please men. Her smile was permanent.

Children, however, loved, loved, loved her. Children left piles of naked Barbies, her hair streaming out and tangled, her legs usually sticking out, and that smile that never ended, strewn across every shared bedroom across normie-land everywhere.

It was normal then.

Things changed: Mattel began treating objects like women, man.

Barbie chose to own her own home, something almost impossible then. She drove a red sports car, lived on the beach, and her modeling career bloomed into fashion design and more.

Her best friend Midge came and went without fanfare. My freckles were sorry to lose the representation.

Her boyfriend Ken was born in 1961, so she’s a cougar, too. Go ggrrrrrrrrrrrrurl. With the advent of the civil rights movement, Barbie got a Black friend. Christie. She began to get all kinds of new career offers, too. She became an Olympic skier, a manager, a doctor, an astronaut, a ballerina, and even Cher — for a brief time.

As Cher, Barbie’s face changed a lot and she wore the native costume that Cher wears while singing Half Breed. That may not go over as well today. Times change. Barbie even had a job at McDonald’s at one point, which sounds quite appalling by today’s more environmentally conscious, plague-aware, and health and job betterment concepts that we have now.

Is Barbie Woke, or are we just gullible?

Maybe today Barbie would enthusiastically join the hustle-culture gig economy. But I can’t see her ferrying food or riders — not unless she switches to frumpy clothes and comfortable shoes.

Having already been an astronaut, that means Barbie’s dream house was foreclosed, she had to pay off student debt (medical and pilot school, too.)

I also just learned she ran for president in 2004. Why couldn’t WE have someone running recently that is more reality-based rather than a joke from a base reality show?

To constantly update social awareness, and to sell more toys, we have had a Kenyan Barbie, Barbie in a Hijab, Japanese Barbie, a curvy Barbie, a wheelchair Barbie, a cancer treatment Barbie, a Down Syndrome Barbie, and more.

There is even a Trans Barbie from the “tribute” collection.

As welcome as all these changes are, what does it say about former generations? What does it say about whether society is setting new trends, or if we are just buying them with lots of hopeful reform bias that may or may not wake people up to bias and push for inclusion?

It seems to say: Oh look. We solved Racism. Sexism. Ableism. Homohopbia. Aren’t we just so pretty and popular at it!

All that is left to do is believe in the world where a sixty plus year old changes her clothes, careers, habits, and hobbies, but never her age.

Toys still peddle a lot of gender bias, too.

Culture has changed a very great deal since 1960. Our dolls have become everything from superheroes, action figures, to robots and transformers. Our girls toys continue to largely be based on hyper-attractive bodies, from pop singers, to royal family, to athletes.

Eventually, though, much of it is destined to become plastic pollution in our oceans. Barbie needs to become going to be a marine ecologist soon, before it’s too wade.

Still, We are more sensitive to every thing a woman can aspire to become. And some people are dead set against such progress.

To them I say go for the original Barbie. All you have to do to live in the Barbie Dream house that never was. Invent a time machine and go backwards.

Do not expect her to cook you dinner in those heels. There was no kitchen in Barbie’s first house.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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