When I was 13, I remember losing the desire to play pretend. I slowly didn’t feel like using my imagination as much. I could feel the childhood dying in me. This is a common experience for most, but was likely accelerated by losing a parent that same year.
But even through those emotionally turbulent adolescent years, while I grappled with my mind and body changing, there’s one toy that still holds my imagination to this day: Barbie.
I don’t still sit on the floor playing with my Barbies, but I do collect them, save pictures of them on Pinterest, and found deep healing in buying the first ‘curvy’ Barbie.
The Barbie movie has brought multiple generations of people together. Record-breaking crowds gathered in their pink best to take a ride to Barbieland. Is it a cinematic masterpiece to me? No. There’s a lack of nuance when it comes to gender and femininity, and how it intersects with capitalism, but I don’t think that was the intention anyways. It was fun, I laughed a lot, and I got to hang out with a new group of friends. There’s not much more I could have asked for.
Seemed innocent enough, but then the next day rolled around after seeing the film.
I was listening to the Barbie soundtrack as I exited the South Kensington tube station, opened my phone as cell service returned, and saw this tweet:
In that moment the retroactive emotional waterfall of existential womanhood hit me like a cartoon piano. With the bubbly music in my ear, I broke down right in the street.
I happened to be on the way to a history exhibit called DIVA at the V&A, and was suddenly not in the right state to be surrounded by the powerful divas of history. I was choking back tears the entire hour and a half walkthrough. Powerful icons who unapologetically express their gender and power, while often fighting for social change, inspire me deeply.
Barbie may have been part of why I rejected femininity as a young child. I wanted to wear black and be “goth”, to the extent where I tried to wear a fake nose ring on the first day of kindergarten.
Barbie’s body, up until just a few years ago, was always the same. Although I don’t remember being insecure because of her specifically, I have no doubt there was a subconscious voice telling me that her body was good and normal, and mine was bad.
Once I grew up, I embraced maximalism and femininity. Sparkles, bold colours, patterns, and makeup. I became more confident year after year, in tandem with better plus size representation in pop culture and fashion (more in this blog post).
There were more options for me to express myself. I learned to do makeup and would sit in my room at night doing elaborate looks. I started learning about queer and drag culture as I was figuring out my sexual orientation. I embraced it all to my own comfort level, and now I am very comfortable with my gender expression.
Even with this complex history in mind, I know that for me, Barbie is undeniably powerful and independent. I am in awe of her influence on the feminist narrative when she was created; a woman that owned her own home, with no kitchen. The stories my sister and I created with her, and the joy and creativity she brought for a good decade is significant to me.
In adulthood, Barbie is an important part of why being a woman is lovely, even if being a woman still has huge burdens.
Preparing for this blog post led me down an amazing rabbit hole about Barbie sets through history. I found so many nostalgic commercials about my old doll houses. So many emotions flooded in, I felt giddy watching them!
In the Miller Girl Toyscape, Barbies, Bratz, and MyScene dolls lived in harmony. They intermingled in families, friendships, and drawn-out epic dramas.
Bratz are really special to me, because I clung to their “alternative” style when I wanted to reject femininity on my own body. My favourite doll of all time is the Rock Angelz Jade doll, who I called Roxy.
My worlds collided when they released a Pride Bratz set in 2022. They are the most beautiful dolls I have ever owned. I had to take them out of the box to pose with their floor-length hair, pins, and signs – one of which read “Ugh! I can’t even think straight!”.
I love seeing sets like these which cater to adults, but heal the inner child.
Why did I grow up with Barbies? That would be Airdrie, my dear mom. She has a long history with Barbies, going back to the 1970s. She kept the magic going for her own girls.
Even as adults, we go to the Barbie aisle and look at all the new sets and comment on their many professions and outfits. We have even gifted Mom a couple Barbies in recent years. I love seeing her innocent glee.
This is why the tweet from earlier got me. My mom has a girl in her heart, and that girl deserves to be nurtured too.
marina miller 