We FINALLY got to see the Barbie movie after the world’s most epic marketing campaign. But what most parents are wondering is: Should we take the kids to see it?
You might expect a body image expert to hate the Barbie movie. Here’s why I don’t…
For a start, I got to go out on a Thursday night, and I was very excited about that. I try to get away with “I’m going out with my friends” when my girls (8-year-old twins) ask me where I’m going, but it’s not enough. I run with: “I’m going to watch the Barbie movie to see if I should take you to see it.” They are satisfied. The older one (boy, age 10) grunts into his iPad. Little does he know that now that I’ve seen it, I will definitely be making him watch the Barbie movie – somehow.
I was ready for the pinkness and the prettiness and the funness of it all. I’d watched the trailer (many times), and I thought that would be what I got. But in all of the marketing, there was very little talk in terms of what the movie was actually about. In the packed cinema, full of mostly mums and middle-aged women, all wearing pink and all giggling with the excitement of getting to watch this film, the lights dimmed, but what we got was nothing like I expected. It was so much better.
A matter of proportions
Before I had kids (the only time I was a ‘perfect’ parent), I was firm in my stance that I would not, absolutely not, allow my kids to have Barbies. I wish I had a photo of the fake smile and thinly concealed terror I had when my girls received one at age three, given to them by friends at Christmas. Those dolls soon went ‘missing’, but over time, as I realised that I couldn’t control everything anything in my house, and after looking deeper into the research in this space, I changed my stance.
We now have a box full of Barbies, none of which are wearing any clothes, and whose teeny, tiny high heels are scattered around every corner of my house. When people find out what I do, I often get questions about whether they should ‘let’ their kids have Barbies, and my short answer is: “The dolls are fine, it’s the media we need to worry about, but let me explain…”
For a long time, Barbie was thought to be bad for body image. After all, she represents a body shape that is the epitome of unrealistic. Research has shown that her proportions would occur in less than 1 in 100,000 adult women and that, if she were life size, her waist would be 20cm smaller than a reference group of women in residential treatment for anorexia nervosa.
The doll’s manufacturer, Mattel, claims the proportions were created for the ease of dressing and undressing the doll, and were never intended to replicate the realistic size and shape of an adult woman.
Over the past 10 years, experimental research studies have found that young girls’ body image was not affected by playing with Barbie dolls. College students, on the other hand, had a decline in their body image after playing with Barbie in another study.
Other studies found that body image was not affected, but that playing with Barbie did increase girls’ preferences for a thin body, and girls ate less after playing with Barbie than with Lego, which is also a concern.
So playing with the dolls might not be an issue, but seeing images of Barbie is another story. Girls who viewed images of Barbie had poorer body image and wanted to be thinner than those who were shown pictures of an Emme doll (with proportions aligned with a US size 16) or images that weren’t of dolls.
We know that children learn by observing, absorbing and imitating the things they see around them, and that their early ideas about weight and appearance are shaped by their family, their peers and the media. Most people don’t realise just how early it starts. Research with 3-5 year olds indicates that they already clearly associate larger figure sizes with more stereotypically negative characteristics, such as being naughty and mean.
When kids have these rigid ideas about which bodies are ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and are exposed to messages that reinforce the importance of thinness in women, this can lead to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders – as they start to try to change their bodies to look like the ones that are held up as being ‘beautiful’ and ‘valuable’ in society.
She’s everything, he’s just Ken… or is he?
Of course, this isn’t just all on Barbie – her sidekick Ken and his plastic six-pack have been blamed for boys’ body image problems too, even though Ken’s proportions are far more realistic (estimated to occur in 1 in 50 men). Many people still think of body image as being a ‘girl problem’, but the research is now generally showing that boys are just as dissatisfied with their appearance, they just a) don’t talk about it as much, and b) do different things to try to change their bodies.
There is a classic research study, published in 1999, that found that the size of superhero figurines for boys increased in size significantly from the 1970s to 1990s, to go beyond what is physiologically possible for men to actually look like. No one has conducted an updated version of that research, but it hasn’t got any better. In fact, now that they have CGI and other special effects, the actual characters in the superhero movies are much larger than they have ever been. This means that young boys get this association in their head that being really big and muscular is what being a ‘real man’ looks like.
And this is what I didn’t expect from the Barbie movie – such a brilliant exploration of the messages that boys are shown about what it means to be a man, and just how quickly that can get out of hand.
But… what about us?
As I looked around the cinema, it dawned on me. This was not a movie for children. This was a movie for us. The 30- to 40-something mums who grew up in a world that was very different to the one we have now.
In our world, throughout the ‘80s, ‘90s and noughties, we were bombarded with images of thinness and ‘perfection’ on movie screens, magazines, TV and billboards. We got a very clear picture of the impossible standards for how we ‘should’ look, compared our own bodies to what we saw and drank in the message that if your body looked a certain way, you would end up lonely and unlovable. We spent years trying to change, control, hide and hate our bodies into submission to conform to these standards, and it cost us a lot.
We panic about giving our kids Barbies, and taking them to see the Barbie movie, because we don’t want our kids to grow up with the same loathing of our bodies that we have, or to waste the same amount of time missing out on life because of the way they think they look.
But we forget that actually WE are a stronger influence on our kids’ thoughts and feelings about themselves, their bodies and their worth. We are there constantly, not just for the running time of a feature-length film. It’s the things WE say that matter to our kids, because we matter to our kids. There’s a lot of evidence that parents impact kids’ body image way more than Barbie does.
And things have changed in the media too. We now see a much broader range of shapes, sizes, colours, abilities and identities represented on our screens.
The Barbie movie, though still visually dominated by Margot Robbie’s physical form, recognisable as that unachievable beauty standard of our youth as ‘stereotypical Barbie’, questions this very standard. The other Barbies, with their unique talents and diverse appearance, are considered much more special.
Seeing the wide range of Barbies – all as beautiful and sparkly as the rest – made me so relieved. Hearing the messages of our youth deconstructed in the incredible performances of a stellar cast made me want to stand up and cheer. And it’s fun. And funny.
As I watched the film unfold, I smiled at the realisation that this movie is the de-programming we (the mums) need. And it is now, more than ever, that the women who were so excited to wear pink and get out on a school night, need to hear the key messages that come through in this film. What each woman takes away from this film is likely to be different from the next, but for me, it’s this: You are not perfect. The world isn’t perfect. And that’s OK. We can come together to create change.
The most exciting thing? That in the world right now, things don’t have to be either/or – things can be both/and. You can have a fun, funny movie that is also deeply feminist. You can wear pink and giggle and change the world. You can be both. Not in the “you can have it all but you have to do it perfectly” way that we were sold female empowerment in the ‘90s – but in the “let’s question that” way of the now.
It’s a YES from me
You need to convince everyone you know to see this film. Yes, even the ones who think it’s not for them. Especially them. And especially the boys and men.
As I walked back to my car after the movie and bumped into a pink-clad gaggle of school mums I knew, we stopped to chat.
“But do you think the kids will even like it, they might get bored?” one asked. “Hmm, most of it will go over their heads,” another added.
“Before we go to see it with the kids I will have to sit them down and teach them all about the patriarchy,” joked another. And she was kind of joking, but THIS is the true power of the Barbie movie.
Because those of us who, at age 40+, have never really been taught about feminism, gender equality or the patriarchy, will now have to do the best we can to explain it to our kids.
This film gives us the perfect opportunity to ask (developmentally appropriate) questions about why Ken thought he needed power and control (and horses) to be considered a real man. This film literally role models girls and women working together to unpack and undo patriarchal systems of control by working smarter and working together.
This film gives us an opportunity to have conversations where we can reinforce positive messages – that everyone is unique and special in their own ways, that we need to focus on who we are more than what we do, that we need to be kind to ourselves, and we need to support each other rather than tearing each other down – all wrapped up in a pink, shiny box with a big bow on it.
“Yessssssssss,” says one of my girls – who pretended to be asleep until I got home so she could ask me if they would get to see the Barbie movie. She’s excited for the pinkness and fun. She might not fully grasp the big ideas in this film, and they might get a bit wriggly in the scenes with the inspirational speeches in them, but I’m still going to take them.
We can’t protect young people from all the things that will damage their body image and their self esteem. But the best thing we can do to reduce the impact is to teach them how to critique the messages they are receiving – and this film helps with that.
