Things Men Have Learned From Barbie Dolls
Mar 13 '01
The Bottom Line The feminine ideal: tall, blond, skinny... plastic.
Sometimes I wish I were a girl.
On second thought: No, I don’t. What I really mean is that sometimes I wish I understood what it was like to be a woman. I do. Because, at this point in my young life, it has become apparent that men and women operate within two completely different systems of logic. And, try as I may, I just can’t tune my brain to that feminine station.
I think it has something to do with menstruation. This isn’t exactly a bold statement, but I think perhaps it’s an accurate one.
When I was in the fifth grade I went on a trip with some friends of the family: two sisters, their mother, and their cousin, who was also female. One of them had a copy of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? and, avid reader that I was at the time, unwittingly picked it up and was halfway through it by the time we reached our destination.
I think I’ve been forever scarred by Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? This was my first exposure to the word “menstruation” and to the concept which comes right along with it. My young mind had been exposed to this incomprehensible aspect of the female experience and Judy Bloom--whether she knew it or not--was asking me to understand a concept which was unfathomable to my eleven year old brain, and still is, even though my age has doubled.
Those who practice meditation often slip into their unconscious while pondering unanswerable questions like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Me, I spiraled down into the same type of mental black hole in attempting to understand menstruation. For a few brief moments in 1989, I was the Buddha.
Now--older, but by no means wiser in the ways of the feminine psyche--I am attempting to return to that place of pre-Margaret innocence. I do not fool myself into thinking that I can in any way relate to the pressures that women face on a daily basis. I would be a complete idiot to believe that I can fully understand the female experience.
I do, however, recognize the societal pressure placed on women regarding the concept of beauty. Beauty in America has been defined by pop culture--magazines, models, celebrities, advertisements all impose an idea of beauty onto their observers. Those observers must react directly to those ideas--being either attracted to them or repulsed by them.
For many women, every billboard of Kate Moss passed on the way to work in the morning translates to a hundred counted calories--not to mention the glances in the mirror and self-imposed comparisons to other women.
This is not groundbreaking news, I know. But, as I’ve said before, I can’t accurately speak to the female experience.
What I can do is point out the equally detrimental effect that those very societal standards of beauty have on men.
Take, for example, the Barbie doll--the widely recognized American ideal. Tall and blond with bodily dimensions that are physically impossible to proportionally assimilate (though not for lack of trying), the Barbie doll represents something to which both men and women aspire.
Unfortunately, in American society, beauty is too often equivocal to status. More often than not, celebrities in this country are more revered for their appearance than for their talent. It’s true, yes, that men have an easier time maintaining celebrity over extended periods of time, regardless of physical appearance. For every middle-aged woman you name with a healthy career in show business that doesn’t bust her a-s-s to keep in top physical condition, I’ll name twenty men (Jason Alexander, Matthew Perry, James Gandolfini…)
But, even if men don’t have a rigid 36-24-36 ideal imposed upon them, they are taught that a Barbie doll is the definition of beauty. And if they don’t adhere to that definition, they are told from all sides that they are somehow less of a man. So men chase after the Barbie doll and become increasingly self-conscious as they realize that they may not have what it takes to attract such a woman. Rather than defining their own concept of beauty, these men alter their own manner and appearance in order to attract what they are told is the perfect woman. These men not only reinforce the pressure on women to conform to what society deems “beautiful,” but they themselves begin to conform to the same types of standard for masculine beauty.
Men and women have two different sets of experiences, yes, but they feed off of one another. It’s a vicious circle, a lose-lose situation. And it begins with the idea of the Barbie doll.
We as parents (and realize that when I say “we,” I mean a distant, distant future idea of a repulsemonkeydad) have a responsibility to teach our children that beauty only exists where the individual decides it exists. And that someone should be able to seek out beauty in whatever they find of interest.
My advice on choosing a Barbie for your child? Don’t. Seek out the alternatives, the toys which a child can love that will give them a unique sense of self and, therefore, will inevitably allow them to respect uniqueness in others. Find the quirky toy, the half-woman, half beast. Teach your child how to make their own doll. Make your child a doll modeled after him or her and teach them how to love it. Refuse to reinforce the societal standards of beauty.
You may be saving your child from infinite amounts of future pain. Because no one, NO ONE can live up to the Barbie doll ideal. Like my complete understanding of the female experience, it’s an impossible dream.
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