Barbie influences gender notions, prof says
Naked Barbies and warrior Joes are continuing traditions of gender from hundreds of years ago.
That was the topic of the speaker at Wednesday’s English Speaker Series in the Haight Alumni Center, attended by about 125 Utah State University students and faculty members.
Associate professor of English Jeannie Thomas studied three-dimensional forms seen on a daily basis, such as Barbie dolls, G.I. Joes, and lawn and cemetery art and the implications they make about gender. She became interested in the topic after hearing stories about folklore from students in her class, and said she started questioning why people chose certain images to display in their yard.
“Why put a peeing boy in your yard?” she said. “I didn’t get it, and I wanted to.”
Thomas talked about the history and folklore of these visible-gender forms. The eroticized, “body-beautiful” image of Barbie and the aggressive, “body-violent” image of G.I. Joe have roots going hundreds of years back, she said. Greek-style statuary often portrays half-nude women, she said, and soldier statues are common in cemeteries.
Barbie was created in 1959, when a mother, Ruth Handler, noticed her daughter Barbara playing with paper dolls that were adults, not baby dolls. Seeing a need in the market for adult dolls, Handler approached Mattel with her idea and “freaked out the male executives,” Thomas said, by suggesting the doll have breasts.
A similar battle was fought over Ken (named after Handler’s son) when he was introduced in 1961, Thomas said, when there was controversy over when Ken should have a “bump” or a “bulge.” In the end, the producers decided on “a very modest bump,” Thomas said.
The physical proportions of Ken and Barbie are not very realistic, Thomas said – men have a one-in-50 chance of having a body like Ken’s, and women have a one-in-100,000 chance of looking like Barbie, and G.I. Joe Extreme, a beefed-up version of Ken, has biceps larger than anyone alive.
Thomas said she played with Barbies a little when she was young, and invited members of the audience to share their memories of playing with Barbie and G.I. Joe. Memories included fashion-play, pretend-family play and Barbie-torture (principally by brothers).
Thomas said there is a backlash against the traditional fashion-conscious Barbie, and shared examples that came from Internet sources, or “e-lore” as she called it. Some sites suggested creating “Brunette Barbie – the only Barbie with a brain,” “Hot-flash Barbie,” who is over 40, and “Birkenstock Barbie,” who gets to wear comfortable footwear rather than precariously high heels.
“One thing you can see happening in the e-lore is this critiquing of this ‘body beautiful’ image of Barbie,” Thomas said. “There’s a real concern with that. There’s also critique of Barbie’s unrealistic world … saying real life is not about Barbie’s dream house and having all the nice clothes.”
Thomas said it was interesting to look at the differences in the way G.I. Joe and Barbie are viewed.
“A soldier, a warrior, although he can be fearsome, has a long historical tradition of being admired, respected and even becoming a subject for public monuments and memorials,” she said.
G.I. Joe doesn’t have the same negative historical baggage Barbie has, Thomas said, despite the fact that he could potentially be more controversial. She cited as an example the fact that only doll collectors seem to know a Nazi G.I. Joe was created in the 1960s.
“But Barbie’s every hairstyle and hemline receives attention,” she said.
-heidithue@cc.usu.edu