Can Barbie Really Have It All?
In 1965, four years before the moon landing, a great American went into space. Astronaut Barbie wore a silver metallic jumpsuit, moon boots, and a kicky white plastic helmet, all the better to breathe with in a vacuum. It didn’t matter that it would be another 18 years before the first American woman, Sally Ride, would actually set foot on the Challenger, or that Astronaut Barbie’s blue eyeshadow predicted the NASA-issue makeup kit that Ride’s male colleagues later assumed she’d need. For Barbie, not even the sky was the limit.
Since then, Barbie has conquered other frontiers that long remained maddeningly out of reach for nondolls. She’s been a Major League Baseball player, (running in 2016 on an all-female ticket). With Barbie, the slogan goes, you can be anything. No children’s toy has been more keyed in to shifts in popular culture when it comes to women, large and small. But Barbie’s relevance comes at a cost. Since her inception, she’s been an avatar for every debate about what modern women should be, do, say, represent, and (most of all) look like. It’s a heavy burden for an 11.5 inch doll to carry—no matter how uncommonly diverse her resume might be.
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