WHAT IF THE PATRIARCHY DIDN'T EXIST

In 1963, three (male) anthropologists, unearthed the remains of a woman nearly 10,000 years old. They found that she had been buried with a projectile point that the men declared to be a '“scraping tool”. The male-centric consensus was that women were/are gathers while men are always the hunters. It took fifty five years and the discovery of a 9,000 year old woman buried with a hunting kit, for this narrative to change. Since then it has been concluded that hunting was/is a gender neutral activity.

This is a prime example of how men have been shaping the history of women and their roles in society for hundreds and thousands of years. I don’t even remember what started the conversation, but recently the Cabbage mentioned an old book of fiction written by some male author telling a woman’s story. I said that I “prefer to no longer read women’s stories written by male authors.” The Cabbage then replied “But what if they do it well?” My response was “Good for them, but men have been writing the story of women and thus defining the idea of what a woman should be for so long that I no longer have the energy to waste on yet another male perspective of a female story.”

This ended our conversation.

I was not completely enthralled with Barbieland. It sounds great. All woman government. A Supreme Court of only women. Women scientists. Women doctors. Women Nobel Prize winners. Every woman in Barbieland is extraordinary in some way. Extra. It is so extra that even Stereotypical Barbie questions her ‘enoughness’. This is where my thoughts get real complicated. In fact it sent me into a tailspin of research. Did you know that the original Barbie was inspired by a German doll that was based on a comic book character named Bilde Lilli, a voluptuous pin-up that was sold as a sexy trinket for World War II soldiers? Ruth Handler may have made some very slight changes, mostly in marketing and she probably did have good intentions in introducing a doll that she said was to be “aspirational”, but this “aspirational” doll’s narrative began as male driven story. Barbie was introduced as a fashion doll for dress-up play in 1961. It took several years for those dress-up clothes to resemble astronauts and doctors. Which left years of little girls aspiring to be pretty and the type of woman their daddies would like.

It is literally impossible to be a woman…

Gloria in Barbie, played by America Ferrera

This is the start of Gloria’s (played by America Ferrera) monolog on the expectations of women and all the contradictions in how we should conduct ourselves. Having to be a perfect Barbie in a perfect Barbie world is exhausting. How many times do we hear Margo Robbie’s character say “I’m just Stereotypical Barbie.”? Even this Barbie thinks she should be more. This group of male executives dreamed up a place where every woman is extraordinary. Barbieland is an expectation to be more not an aspiration for more. Expectations and aspirations do not have the same definitions. Barbieland is a product of the patriarchy. There has been criticism of Barbie’s easy forgiveness of Ken’s actions in this movie. I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone that Barbie had maybe two days of Ken’s bullshit introduction of the patriarchy. Ladies, we’ve had years of this bullshit.

This may sound like I did not like the movie. That’s not true. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I’m a huge fan of Greta Gerwig, the writer/director and I believe she found a fun and entertaining way to tell a story about women. Go see it. The music and dance scenes are spectacular. Just be prepared to have some thoughts.

Did you know that women have thoughts?

I LOVE HER I HATE HER

From age four to probably eight or nine, I was strictly a Strawberry Shortcake girl. Thanks to Mom and Katrina, I owned every Strawberry Shortcake doll that was produced between 1980 and 1985. I had themed bedding and dishes. Even the canopy on my bed was made from material patterned with Strawberry Shortcake. It was a lot ridiculous, but sometimes I miss that canopy bed. I can remember loading up all the dolls into the giant, plastic, Strawberry case, grabbing a blanket and marching out to the pasture where I would spend hours making those dolls have all kinds of adventures.

I wasn’t much of a Barbie girl.

Look, I tried. I wanted to like Barbie. Really. I did. I had two or three Barbie dolls and two of those Barbie cases that held the dolls and all the clothing. I spent a lot of time organizing the ‘closet’ of my Barbie cases. Most of my readers just read that sentence and said to themselves “of course you did.” What? My Barbies had a lot of clothing thanks to a mom who sews and loves garage sales. There was plenty to organize. This is really all I did with my Barbies. They did not have adventures. They had closet clean out parties. While this post is not intended to go in this direction, I have to point out that this explains a whole lot about the person I have become.

Any way… Barbie… I wanted to love her. Even when I out grew her, I wanted to love her. For the longest time, I owned an Astronaut Barbie that I kept safe in the original box. I wanted to buy into this idea that women could be anything because, LOOK! Barbie’s an astronaut! Chris and I made almost weekly trips to Toys-R-Us to just browse. He’d roam off to the SciFy area and I would roam around the Barbie section debating the need for the Doctor Barbie or the Veterinarian Barbie. I felt that Doctor Barbie was pretty important because for years before they released this one, all the Mattel line had was a nurse Barbie. The first time I saw it, I wanted to fist pump the air and shout out “Yeah, that’s right! We can be doctors too! Boom!” Once I made it past the career path Barbies, I would be smack in the middle of all the stuff I hated about Barbie, the fashion plate unrealistic beauty standard Barbie.

These were the Barbies I had been given as a child to play with because those career path Barbies didn’t really exist yet. They were not doctors or lawyers. Their sole purpose was to be beautiful and have the tinniest waste imaginable with perfect tits. I did my best with them, spent time brushing their hair and changing their outfits, but it didn’t take long to get bored. They just did not represent anything realistic to me. I was not a fashion plate kind of girl and criticism about my weight told me I would never come close to attaining that kind of beauty. Over time I would eventually end up cutting the hair short on all of them. I painted on pubic hair and added a drop of red nail polish to their underwear. Some acquired extra piercings and a tattoo. They sold some shoes for books. My mother said that I ruined them, but I argued that I improved them. These Barbies said “We can do anything we want. Period. Fuck the patriarchy and the social construct horse they rode in on!”

I started writing this all before seeing the Barbie movie because I was already having thoughts on it that I didn’t want to lose. I was writing this during a week when I had one too many interactions with men who questioned my abilities because of my female parts. I had one man explain tape to me and that I could get tape at Home Depot. My friend Amanda said that she would not have been surprised if the man told me that I needed to have my husband go buy the tape for me. Then Sinead O’Connor’s death hit the news and I deflated. I remember the first time I saw her. It was in her video for Nothing Compares To You and I was struck by her beauty, both physically and musically. When you get a chance, listen to her rendition of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina. An amazing artist and such a brave advocate, she was our Joan of Arc standing up for the abused and saying a firm “NO” to corporate music and the commercialization of her art.

I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace - Sinead O’Connor, Emperor’s New Clothes

I know now that when I altered my Barbies I was attempting to make them reflect a person I wanted to be. Cool. Tough. Brave. A warrior. I may have managed to be half of those things. We’re taking the Cabbage to see the Barbie Movie tonight and while I love and trust Greta Gerwig’s vision, I have a feeling I’m going to love/hate this Barbie as well. A Barbie who questions death and existence and who struggles with the idea of hurting Ken’s feelings even when he’s driving her crazy.

That kind of Barbie may be too relatable.

BARBIE FOR PRESIDENT

You guys, I picked this up and put it back like five times. I don't need it, but I sure do want it. #barbie #girlpower💪

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 11 likes

Well, I did it. I was in Target several weeks ago, roaming the toy isle because that's a habit I never broke and that's when I came across the best Barbie set I've ever seen. Mattel has released a Barbie President and Vice President doll set. I stood there holding the box in my hands while wheels turned in my head. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but the people at Barbie have really been stepping up their game. Barbie has a normal body shape and there are dolls of all shapes and colors these days. Barbie is also doing more things than galavanting around in a pink car and shopping. She's a pilot. She's a firefighter. She's a doctor. And now, she's a president. I have to admit, my inner Lisa Simpson was jumping up and down with joy over these Barbies. I could totally envision setting up a Presidential State of the Union in front of an all female Barbie Congress. 

Then practical Cindy stepped in and said that we didn't need those Barbies. There was no place to put these Barbies. They would just end up in the basement with my Harley Quinn Barbie, Roller Girl Barbie and my Astronaut Barbie. I set the Barbies down. I picked them up again. I set them back down. The Cabbage had asked for Barbies for her birthday. The few Barbies she had at my place had disappeared. I suspect they got left over at the neighbor's place, but didn't feel like pressing it. The little girl over there is older than the Cabbage and doesn't really like playing with her. She always has some excuse when the Cabbage goes to ask if she can play. Any way, the Barbies she'd taken over there were the kind of Barbies that make me roll my eyes. Goodbye and good riddance Princess Ballerina Barbie. I picked up the President and Vice President Barbies again and thought that these Barbies would be way better than Princess Ballerina Barbie. 

I put the Barbies in my cart even while making my skeptical face. The Cabbage was turning six, is now six actually. I'm sure the first thing she would have planned for her Barbies would be to switch outfits, not attend a special UN meeting. Because she's six and doesn't even know what any of that means. I told myself that I was going to give these Barbies as a gift with the full knowledge that the Cabbage was probably going to wreck them. I just couldn't not buy them. When the Cabbage opened them at her birthday party on Saturday, her mother looked at me with big excited eyes and said "you got them?!?!" She'd seen my Instagram post about my indecision to buy them. She then held the Barbies up so that all the other mothers and women in the room could see them. We all cheered and fist pumped the air. The Cabbage and her friends just sort of shrugged their shoulders and then shouted "Yay! Barbies!"

Because this is a nonissue for them.

It doesn't even dawn on those six year olds that an all female presidential ticket is not possible or even unique. "Well of course the President and Vice President are women. Duh!" Can you even imagine it? All of the mothers in that room are of an age that grew up being told that woman can do almost anything. We could be doctors and lawyers, maybe even be a nurse in the military. We also grew up seeing that women who wanted to do those things had to do EVERYTHING. It was like your sacrifice for wanting to do a "man's job". You worked your ass off, then you came home and was a homemaker for your family. A woman had to do it all. And just as a side note rant, I'd like to add that my Mom did all of those things even when she had the flu so bad, it gave her a heart murmur. When I was a little girl, I was under the impression that Mom had a job because she needed a hobby and something to do with herself now that all her kids were in school. Once I got to college, I noticed that the language started to change. It was no longer "we can do almost anything." Now it was "we can do anything!" 

I think a lot of us took ahold of the whole we can do anything without actually believing it. We'd preach it and shout it, but deep down we would be hesitant to really truly believe that women are equal. Now we are raising a new generation of girls who actually believe that girls can do anything. These six year olds are going to think nothing of an all female ticket because it seems totally normal to them. This makes me sit back and say "WOW!" There's going to be a day when kids are going to not believe you when you tell them stories about phones with cords attached to a wall. Even better, there's going to be a day when you tell kids stories about how only men were ever Presidents of the United States and they're all going to be like "No way!"

And I will be all "Yes way! Crazy, right?"