I watched the Barbie movie again last week after Ryan Gosling rocked the “Ken” song on the Academy awards. I needed a night full of pink, woman power, and fun music. Barbie is one of us, you know. Never had kids. Most versions of Barbie never got married, and well, it’s difficult to make babies when you don’t have genitals.
I was also reminded of Barbie when I came across a chapter that didn’t make it into my Childless by Marriage book. It’s titled “I’d Rather Die Than Be Like My Mother.” Now, those are not my words. I was quoting someone else. I think my mother was fantastic. I did want to be like her. But let me share a little about Barbie and the other dolls from that missing chapter.
On the TV soup commercial, the little girl with pigtails tells us about her mother taking care of her big family, making sure everyone is healthy, happy and well-fed. “She’s supermom,” the girl says. “I want to grow up to be just like my mom.”
Click. Suddenly I realize what makes some little girls want to be mommies while others don’t want anything to do with motherhood. It’s role models. You want to emulate the people you admire. My mother was a great mom, so I grew up wanting to be one, too. I also wanted to be a writer like Grandma Rachel, and I wanted to be in show biz like all the people I saw on TV. My Barbie dolls were always singers going off to do a show, not mommies in the kitchen making dinner.
Interestingly, some of the women I interviewed said their Barbies were themselves or their friends. Others saw Barbie as an adult role model. Gina, an unmarried 42-year-old court reporter, says, “Barbie kicked ass and was a professional woman, not a wife and mother.” But Talia, who at 34 still hopes to find the right man and have children, confesses, “My dolls were all my babies. I’d even make my Barbie doll pregnant.”
Most of the women in my life were mothers. My grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and the other women who lived on our block were all mothers. The ladies on TV were mothers. Even those show business icons I admired were mothers or destined to become mothers once they met and married the man of their dreams. In the fairy tales I read, the hero and heroine got together and next thing you knew they had children.
It was even in the songs: “Tea for Two for two and two for tea, me for you and you for me. We will raise a family, a boy for you, a girl for me. Can’t you see how lovely it will be.”
Babies were considered a good thing. When my Aunt Joyce gave birth to my cousins Tracy and Chris, it was great news. Everyone was happy. Babies were held out as a treasure. “Do you want to hold him?” the mothers would ask.
I didn’t spend too much time around babies growing up, unless you count all the dolls I treated like my children, but I was raised to believe that every little girl would grow up to be a mommy. Watching my mother modeling near-perfect motherhood every day of her life, I never questioned wanting to be a mother. Of course I wanted children.
At one point in the introduction to the Barbie movie, we see a group of little girls cuddling and caring for their baby dolls. All the little mothers look a little brainwashed. But then, Barbie arrives with the music from “2001” playing, and the little moms smash their baby dolls to bits.
That’s how much our world changed in the years when I was growing up. But the Barbie dolls of the movie were not content to be stereotypes with perfect figures and high heels on their forever tiptoed feet. They start to realize there’s more to life and they have the power to go after it. As for poor Ken, sorry.
I don’t want to dive into politics, but our world seems to be changing again with a large contingent of U.S. conservatives wanting to take away reproductive choices by outlawing abortion and more recently, declaring illegal some of the key aspects of fertility treatments. Are they trying to bring back the world where little girls spend all their time taking care of make-believe babies until they grow up expecting to raise real babies? Let’s look at the beginning of the movie again, just before Barbie arrives. There are five girls on the screen. Take the infant dolls away from two of them. Those girls are us, the ones who do not have babies.
I don’t know if there has ever been or will be a short, dumpy, gray-haired Barbie in a pink hoodie and jeans who is always reading or writing, but there might be. Writer Barbie! We are each free to be our own kind of kick-ass Barbie, mother or not. As non-mom narrator Helen Mirren says in the movie, “Because Barbie can be free to be anything, women can be free to be anything.” Bottom line, motherhood is the traditional choice, but it is not the only choice. If you still have your doll, raise her up high and vow to keep it that way.
While you’re at it, read this fabulous poem by Denise Duhamel about Barbie facing Medicare. It was published on March 19 at the Rattle poetry site. Also take a look at The Barbie Diaries by my friend Dale Champlin , and Barbie Chang by Victoria Chang.
In fact, there are a lot of Barbie books. Clearly she is more than just a doll.
Photo by Criativa Pix Fotografia on Pexels.com
Childless by Marriage 