The world descended into Barbie-mania last year, with Greta Gerwig’s much-anticipated film starring the leggy blonde doll who’s been the staple of children’s homes since the 1950s. It seemed you couldn’t turn around without seeing the now iconic Barbie-pink hues splashed across billboards and magazines, or be greeted with a call of ‘Hey Barbie!’
While the full-blown craze may have died down, the hype isn’t over yet, with the Design Museum’s latest exhibition celebrating Barbie’s 65th year.
The exhibition layout is exactly what you would want – with the museum transforming its lower level rooms into pink-clad, dream-house-style portals that take you into Barbie’s world. There’s a room where Barbie dolls throughout the years are showcased in a rainbow row of glass cases, mannequins wearing life-size versions of Barbie’s outfits, a section displaying Barbie’s dreamhouse across the decades, and even a chandelier wrapped in the silky locks used to make the dolls’ hair.
Visitors can see the full scope of how Barbie is made, from how her clothes are sewn, her face is painted and her hair is meticulously sewn piece by piece into her head. The inner workings of the doll are also on display, showcasing a phase where the dolls were integrated with mechanisms to make them walk and talk, in a feat of engineering that was relatively forward-thinking at the time.
In this way, it’s a true homage to the skill and intricacy that goes into creating each and every doll, and to the ways the design has shifted over the years in response to technological as well as social advancements.
However, once you get over the visual appeal and down into what the exhibition is really saying, it’s a more interesting story.
Many of the accompanying descriptions read like a PR script for Mattel, stressing how the corporation has responded to cultural shifts by changing Barbie’s aesthetic, and how it doesn’t imbue any particular cultural norms in the doll – it is instead ‘up to the children’ to project their own assumptions onto her.
While it is true that Barbie has gone through several changes – with the first Black Barbie launched in 1968, and different body types introduced into the production line in 2016 – there is an unavoidable correlation between the stereotypical Barbie’s blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slim physique and the notion of a ‘perfect’ woman – as well as the link between Barbie’s opulent lifestyle and the capitalist mindset that more stuff equals more happiness.
While these are connections we’re all aware of, it would have been interesting to acknowledge and explore that a bit more in the exhibition, rather than have Mattel repeatedly pat themselves on the back for their decision to include Barbies with varying skin tones and body shapes. For a corporation that boasts of its cultural significance, it was markedly unwilling to speak about the negative effects it can (and does) have.
The use of dolls as an aspirational model for children was, however, referenced in the exhibition, with these dolls depicted as a ‘blank canvas’ for children to project their dreams and identities onto. With this lens, Barbie’s apparent financial independence and litany of careers is a facet of her design that can be seen as relatively groundbreaking for the time.
The original Dreamhouse, launched in 1962, came at a time when women in the real world were not granted the same freedom of ownership – with women in the U.S. often denied mortgages if they were unmarried. Barbie’s 250 careers (including Olympic athlete, astronaut, and president) also gave young girls a positive role model at a time when women have faced (and continue to) significant roadblocks to careers based on sex and race.
In this way, credit where credit is due, Mattel has given Barbie some of the tools to be a positive role model for young children. There’s also an argument to be made for the fact that Barbie is meant to be fun, and should avoid the more weighted conversations of how she feeds into notions of patriarchy. She is, ultimately, a toy.
However, as the exhibition repeatedly stresses the formative impact of toys on a young child’s brain, especially one that comes with an entire lifestyle attached, this argument falls somewhat short.
There is a fun, beautiful and hopeful side to Barbie for sure, and the exhibition manages to capture this spirit, with much of it being a celebration of the possibilities of design, fashion and play. However, Mattel’s overarching presence is too strong for the exhibition to be solely joyous. Ultimately, you can’t get Barbie without Mattel, and the knowledge of Barbie’s consumerist ties will always leave a sour aftertaste.
-Scarlett Evans
Manager, Contemporary Art
Girl Museum