The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set newsroom policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.
Naomi Ishisaka is the assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion and staff development and the social justice columnist for The Seattle Times.
I was never a Barbie girl, but I definitely understand what it means to live in a Barbie world.
Growing up in the ’80s in a feminist household, I didn’t have a Barbie, but I knew what they were and what they represented. My friends had Barbies and I would play with their dolls and their Barbie-pink Dreamhouses. The impossibly proportioned 11.5-inch plastic embodiment of unattainable female beauty standards loomed over my childhood, along with the thin, white actors and supermodels of the era.
Barbie serving as an aspirational ideal for girls was in sharp contrast to our household, where my sister and I wore our boy cousins’ hand-me-down jeans and shirts, and were encouraged to use tools, dig for geoducks, play in the dirt and build things.
But dominant society was ever present. Diet culture reigned in the media and unlike today, there was no social media and no countermovement of body positivity, racial and size inclusive casting or queer visibility to disrupt the mainstream narrative.
So it was against that backdrop that when I heard there was going to be a live-action Barbie movie, I shrugged. But as the buzz started to grow and I learned Greta Gerwig was directing, I became more curious. How could a staunchly feminist director like Gerwig tackle the contradictions of a doll that represents so much of retrograde sexism?
After watching the film last week, I realized she did it by addressing it head on.
Much to the loud — and in one case literally flaming — meltdowns of conservative male critics, the “Barbie” movie directly addresses criticism of the toy and creates a bluntly feminist alternate universe where the Supreme Court is all women and the president is played by Issa Rae. Trans women and cisgender women of all backgrounds, shapes and sizes (though only under age 30 it seems) are bosses of everything. Sexism is nonexistent, sexual violence unheard of and the men, the Kens, are an afterthought at best.
It’s only after (spoiler alert!) Stereotypical Barbie and Ken visit the real world that Ken is exposed to the delights of patriarchy and comes back to Barbieland with an armful of Ken’s Rights books and a new belief in his own natural superiority.
Yes, it’s silly, but it’s also subversive.
The “Barbie” movie joins a wave of pop culture phenomena where — to crib the Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin anthem — sisters are doing it for themselves and breaking records while they are at it.
Not only did the Barbie movie shatter the box office record for a film directed by a woman and earn $162 million in its opening weekend, over the same weekend, Seattle saw the meteoric power of another pop culture icon — Taylor Swift — and her staggering 144,000 fans who rejoiced in Swift’s own brand of feminism and womanhood. Swift and her Swifties were so loud at Lumen Field that the show registered as seismic activity, a “Seismic Swift.”
Swift also addresses sexism in her work, tackling double standards in songs like “The Man” (the video is extraordinary). I am no Swiftie, by any stretch, but I know many women and girls, in particular, who through Swift’s music feel empowered, inspired and seen.
I get that feeling. When I was an adolescent, I remember struggling with the tension between what I was told I could be at home and what I saw in the media and pop culture. But in the later part of the ’80s, when more conventional singers like Tiffany or Debbie Gibson were leading the pop charts, I had my own experience of feeling seen and empowered.
I remember watching MTV during that time and my jaw dropping at the sight of a baldheaded young woman with piercing eyes and a ferocious but vulnerable voice. She was not a prepackaged pop star by any measure. Sinéad O’Connor defiantly wore what she wanted and did what she wanted without regard for the male gaze, the music industry or dominant beauty standards.
O’Connor spoke up about injustice, in ways that cost her personally and professionally. She spoke up for hip-hop and against racism. She talked about the legacy of trauma and abuse. O’Connor was for me and millions of other girls, a beacon of what was possible.
Her death last week at just 56 was devastating for so many in Gen X and beyond. Standing for what is right is never easy or popular, and she paid the price a million times over, but never backed down.
But I believe O’Connor helped pave the way for artists like Gerwig, Swift and so many others to forge their own paths and break the mold for future generations.
That path can be whatever we want it to be.
