Barbie is no apple

I was brought up with Barbies (lots and lots and lots of them) and My Little Ponies and Polly Pocket and doll houses and every sort of dress-up costume you can imagine (most of them with pink and purple and sparkles).  I helped my mom pick out her perfume and heels when she went out on dates with my dad (The red heels and sparkly gold ones were my favorites, no matter what dress she wore -- both now have a happy home in my closet).  Most home movies have me dressed up in some sort of girly princess outfit.  My room was all pink, with cat and Disney Princess posters.  I had Barbie roller skates and a Barbie video game.  I got all the Barbie happy meals at McDonalds....

 

I was also brought up to believe that girls are just as strong as boys.  My parents purposely picked a female dentist for my brother and me to show us a woman could be a strong doctor and to give us a female professional role model.  I kicked a soccer ball (pink, of course) around with my mom at the local park, had a skateboard, and used our basketball hoop at least as much as my brother.  I've always believed my mom has superpowers and is as strong as any man.  It never occurred to me that just because I loved playing with dolls that apparently had unrealistic measurements that I should grow up to look like them and be some passive waif in the passenger seat of Ken's car (I'm actually not sure I owned any Ken dolls -- just about 100 Barbies and 10 Skippers).  I could be a brilliant all-powerful ballerina/brain surgeon/Hollywood bigwig/writer and have my sparkly heels and closet full of dresses and Malibu Dream Home, too.  So I have always been annoyed by the backlash against Barbies and the notion that playing with them encourages girls to have messed up ideas about what their bodies should look like and decreases their self-confidence.  To me, Barbies (and all my other dolls) were just one way to stimulate my imagination into making stories.  When I have the opportunity at family gatherings to round up some old Barbies and play with some little girls who are extended family members and who aren't allowed to own any Barbies, I find that, because they don't play regularly, it takes awhile for them to figure out how to use their imaginations and do more than just dress them up in outfits.  Once I get them going, however, they start getting creative and using their brains.  I never see it be anything other than a positive experience for them, and I never see them wonder why the proportions on the dolls are weird....  I think the fact that Barbie's head twists backwards and comes off and her elbows don't move and that she's, ya know, made of plastic, might be hints even for those little girls that she's just a plastic doll, not an example of a perfect human.  I can't help but think that if they were allowed to play with dolls more, they'd actually have more outlets to use and develop their imaginations and to see themselves in more ways. 

So I was completely delighted when I saw this new commercial for Barbies a while ago, which corresponds with my experience playing with them as a little girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1vnsqbnAkk

I was also not surprised to see a not-allowed-to-own-Barbies girl post this on Facebook:

“Girls are like apples...the best ones are at the top of the trees. The boys don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground that aren't as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think there is something wrong with them, when, in reality, they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree...” 

 

While the point of this is probably to make girls who are late bloomers with boys feel good about themselves, I find it incredibly degrading to girls -- both the ones labeled "rotten apples" and the ones who think they have to just wait around at the top until some boy comes along and decides to pick them.  I said as much, saying something about how the apple could just hop down and pick the best boy because the apple is actually a girl who has just as much right to pick her prince as any boy has to pick his princess -- hoping to inspire a little girl power in that girl -- and, since everyone looks for arguments on Facebook, I was met with this reply from someone else:

"But why would the best apple want to hop down from the tree to pick the Best boy? Better to have the finest boy court her and then marry and live happily ever after."

I find this point of view sad and unrealistic and degrading to women.  How do you get a happily ever after when you leave the selecting of your "ever after" to someone else instead of having a hand in choosing and pursuing it yourself?  And what is happily ever after anyway?  There's hopefully a whole lot of "ever after" after that whole "court and marry" part.  Hopefully girls grow up imagining all the ever afters they can have and don't just end their imaginations with the Disney Princess movie ending (and I'm saying this as someone who loves and owns the special editions of every single Disney Princess movie).  I know that my Barbies led active lives, starred in an infinite variety of exciting adventures, conquered amazing challenges, and reached amazing goals; whether as lumber jacks or doctors or plumbers, my Barbies would have been bored silly sitting around in a tree, watching life zip by without them.  They’d jump down and write their own stories.