NOVEMBER 12, 2009 ISSUE
Barbies For Real—Exhibit Replaces Fantasy with Truth
“Barbies We Would Like To See” at ASU Living Learning Center Through December
When Barbara McCaughey heard about her daughter’s ASU project, “Barbies We Would Like To See,” she immediately thought of a Grandma Barbie.
“I am just acknowledging the contribution the more mature woman makes [to the world]. It’s a different image of women than the kind Mattel puts out,” she said.
Barbara is the mother of the director of Women’s Studies at ASU. Her daughter, Professor Martha McCaughey, had wanted to do a Barbie project ever since an exhibition and contest at the University of California at Davis fired her imagination several years ago. This year’s 50th anniversary of the Mattel icon, coinciding with the offer of a window at the Mast General Store in downtown Boone, provided the perfect opportunity.
“With Barbie, the emphasis is always on youth,” said Barbara, “but the image of grandma is different for this generation than it was some time ago. Grandmas do all the same things [that Barbie does]. They go to the beach, they are interested in public policy, they contribute to the community, attend courses at the university, go to exercise classes.”
Grandma Barbie sits in a chair reading to two grandchildren; wears a sweatsuit, tennis shoes and reading glasses; has shorter, graying hair—and two cats.
The exhibition also includes a Gender-Ambiguous Barbie, a Public-Breastfeeding Barbie, a Full Figured and Fabulous Barbie, two Punk Rocker Barbies, a Breast Cancer Survivor Barbie, an Equality Barbie and many others.
One submission that didn’t make the exhibit because it was too big was the 7-feet 3-inches Barbie image from ASU’s Counseling Center—the original doll projected to life size.
The Women’s Studies Program at ASU organized the free exhibit. Twenty students, ASU staff and local residents contributed to the display, which moved at the start of November from its Mast Store location to the Living Learning Center at ASU, where it is on display from now until December 1, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“[The critique by these Barbies] was a negative body image that that kind of toy would be giving girls,” said Martha, whose contribution is the Stay-at-Home Ken, which expresses the wish that men could take more responsibility for childcare.
The Pink Ribbon Barbie that Mattel produced some years ago enraged Natalie Fullam, a freshman English education major and volunteer at ASU’s Women’s Center.
“[That] Barbie was a disgrace to any woman who had ever survived breast cancer. [She] had long blonde hair…a fancy up-do, was wearing a pink ball gown and had both of her breasts still intact. I decided to make a Breast Cancer Survivor Barbie to show…what a fighter of breast cancer looked like.”
Fullam’s Barbie is flat-chested from a double mastectomy, has hair growing back after chemotherapy and wears a hospital gown.
“It was interesting to me because there was a vulnerable Barbie. It lets you imagine women who have had bad things happen and can survive,” said Martha.
“[The dolls] allowed us to do things that Mattel wouldn’t approve,” she added.
The Public Breast-Feeding Barbie she finds especially intriguing: she wonders where Barbie would get the baby because she and Ken were never officially married.
Another pointed exhibit is the Muslim Barbie, by ASU Professor Elaine O’Quinn.
“Her research shows how overly sexualized the [American] teenage culture is,” she said, adding that Mattel supports it through its scantily glad dolls. So the exhibition is a way to counteract this.
“[These dolls] can symbolize our hopes—those of us who have hopes beyond the Mattel Barbie,” added O’Quinn.
If Barbie Were Real
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Image courtesy of ASU Counseling Center
Image courtesy of ASU Counseling Center
If Barbie were real, she’d be as tall as 7-feet 3 inches.
“She’d have a giant chest and wouldn’t be able to stand upright,” said ASU’s Professor Martha McCaughey about the ASU Counseling Center’s Barbie, which was too big for the “Barbies We Would Like to See” exhibition, currently at ASU.
The grossly out-of-proportion Barbie demonstrates clearly the unreal expectations that constantly bombard young American women.
The Beauty Mark movie, which its maker, Diane Israel aired at ASU in September, also highlighted the same unreal expectations that too many Americans try to live up to.
The Counseling Center uses Mattel’s 50-year-old Barbie, expanded to full size in proportion to the doll, to help students tackle eating disorders, which link to such grossly distorted images. One in four college women suffers from some form of eating disorder, while 90 percent of the national epidemic of eating disorders affects women.
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