Everyone has their Barbie story to tell. Here’s mine: as a kid, I remember having several Barbie dolls — most of them were career-inspired Barbies centered around animals: Ocean Friends Barbie with a wetsuit and Orca, Love ‘N Care Vet Center Barbie, a riding Barbie with a horse. In truth, I don’t have many memories of playing with my Barbies — the memories I do have are less about their beauty or my storylines for their lives, instead they are purely sensory: the smell of their plasticky molds, the fidgetiness of their tiny accessories, the prickle of the velcro closures on their clothing. Largely, my Barbies played supporting roles to the real stars in my dream house: G.I. Joe & Ken.
All this is on my mind as I’m reading a constellation of books that intersect with masculinity — Stone Butch Blues, Pageboy, and The Book of Delights. Soon, I’ll write about what I’ve found in these pages. But for now, in the style I’m learning from Ross Gay, I want to record my delight in the Barbie movie: what a treat.
Perhaps the first time in my life that I’ve immersed myself in a pink world and not felt like an outsider (really don’t know how Greta pulled this off). I would love to hear from other former tomboys, butches, dudes, or just folks who felt alienated by Barbie in childhood but enjoyed seeing this world in theaters. My inbox is open to you all!
God love Allan for a masterclass in co-conspiracy. Barbie’s ally-in-arms knows he has his own stake in destroying the patriarchy & isn’t afraid to put his skin in the game (also, love a queer-coded guy who wins in hand-to-hand combat + I want to see more queers beating fascists up on the big screen!).
What do y’all think is going on with the nods to lesbianism? You have to meet up with Kate McKinnon, wear Birkenstocks, and belt out “Closer to Fine” in order to make it out of Barbieland and into the Real World? Is being dyke-pilled the way out of the Matrix? What is going on?! I remain confused, yet flattered. For anyone still curious, I hear we’re recruiting.
So much has been said about Barbie and what she means for women (and everyone else). I loved Wilkinson’s examination of Barbie through the creation myth of Genesis, and the follow-up from Men Yell At Me was so, so satisfying. The Daily’s report provided me with the Barbie background I didn’t know I needed. Stevie and I found ourselves entranced by the Tiny Shoulders documentary streaming on Hulu. I’ve consumed more Barbie content in the past four weeks than I probably did during the entirety of childhood. And while kid-Farris found Barbie dolls boring because they were for girls (a category my kid-self never seemed to understand as my own box), adult-Farris finds them fascinating precisely for that reason.
This mirrors something else from childhood: the sudden outward turning of puberty. I spent much of my early childhood throwing footballs at recess (and being told by my disapproving 5th-grade math teacher that football was for boys) or trekking off into any patch of pines, kudzu, or honeysuckle I could find. Then suddenly I found myself absolutely starstruck by the girls in my classes, endlessly wrestling with the questions of what exactly did I feel about them? (No tagline has ever summed up my middle school-era feelings about other girls vs. myself quite as well as: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”)
Back to my Barbie Story, which is really a story of other plastic dolls:
My collection of G.I. Joes was an odd one. I had handmedown classic soldier Joes from my since-absent father. These melded into a small collection of the conservationist Joes, which I favored. (In the 1990s, G.I. Joe briefly pivoted from the infantry frontlines to work as a naturalist — a career switch likely prompted by the environmentalism of the times — his artillery was switched over to tranquilizer guns for tagging endangered creatures; his “kung-fu grip” was used to hold a telephoto lens camera instead of disarming enemy combatants.)
I don’t know what intrigued me about these figures. The range of movement offered by their mid-torso ability to flex and their articulated joints? Their hyper-masculine physique? Perhaps their resemblance to my own father? — a man who, in my toddler years, was a phantom specter while away on leave for the Marine Corps, and then post-divorce decided to end his tenure as a “dad” to settle into his new role as a vaguely menacing ghost.
More strange still, my Kens had really no interest in their Barbies. They instead spent their time as both the friends and romances of my G.I. Joes. Butterfly Art Ken and Shaving Fun Ken both waited patiently for their husbands to return from a war or a jungle, depending on what mission Joe was on. What exactly was so captivating to me about Shaving Fun Ken’s disappearing and reappearing beard? I don’t yet have an answer. (And while the outstanding joke is Ken might be queer-coded as a gay man, there’s an argument to be made that many Kens read more like lesbians — I dare you to tell me this isn’t a birding butch)
Most of my lesbian friends have stories of their Barbies falling in love with one another. As for what Joe & Ken mean for my inner landscape of gender and sexuality, I’m not quite certain. Much like the lands my G.I. Joes traveled to, this interior space is sometimes a war, sometimes a jungle. A war — like bell hook’s definition of queer as “the self that is at odds with everything.” A jungle — dense, lush, feral, teeming, & filled with undiscovered species — as Andrea Gibson writes, “your pronouns haven’t been invented yet.” Here’s what I do know: that little kiddo — and every kiddo — deserved/s space to figure it out.