Leaving Barbie Land

As a kid, I loved the groovy women's libbers fighting for the futures of girls like me. Who could have imagined the work would be so hard?

Credit: Martin Martz on Unsplash.

When the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in January 1973, I was in the first grade. I misheard the television newscaster—I thought he was announcing a scientific breakthrough rather than a legal matter—but I got the gist. A woman who was pregnant could become not-pregnant. I still wasn’t entirely clear on how women became pregnant, but it was always treated like a surprise. A happy surprise called for cake and presents and hand-knit baby blankets. A bad surprise meant becoming an “unwed mother,” and the end of all your hopes and dreams.

When I heard news that women could become unpregnant, I filed the information in the folder children have in their brains marked, STUFF THAT MIGHT BE IMPORTANT IN THE FUTURE. I was glad to know I’d never suffer the fate of the doomed young mothers I saw in television dramas and news reports. That narrative-ending plot point would never happen to me.

The early 1970s was an exciting time to be a little girl. The world was changing for women, and depending on whom you asked this was either very good or very bad news. When my parents watched the TV news each night, I ignored the stories about Watergate and the Vietnam War. But I snapped to attention when the newscasters reported on the Women’s Liberation Movement—or “women’s lib” as it was then called.

The women marching in the streets were young and cool, like my teenage babysitters. They explained to reporters that they wanted to have the same things men had, like the right to get a good job and earn their own money. They wanted to do more with their lives than cook, clean and take care of children. They wanted to follow their dreams—to become doctors, business executives, authors or even president of the United States.

My mom told me this was new. When she was little, the only career options presented to girls were teacher, nurse and secretary. Now girls could be anything we wanted! I felt very lucky that women’s lib was happening.

My parents agreed with me about women’s lib, but this was not the dominant view in the culture. The TV newsmen who explained the world to us each night, like ABC’s Howard K. Smith and CBS’s Eric Sevareid, expressed their disapproval of the movement, assuring audiences that woman’s lib was a passing fad. Reporting on one women’s protest, ABC News anchor Harry Reasoner noted that “one official commented on the unattractiveness of the women and the extreme fuzziness of their hair.”

Then there was activist Phylliss Schlafly, who made a career out of telling women they didn’t want careers. In a 1972 speech, Schlafly expressed disdain for feminist magazines sharing the view that many women thought being a housewife was lonely and boring. “It hasn’t occurred to them that a woman’s best ‘escape from isolation and boredom’ is—not a magazine subscription to boost her ‘stifled ego’—but a husband and children who love her,” she wrote. 

Many adults in my life—teachers, friends’ moms—shared these views, dismissing the women’s libbers as loonies who were going against nature and trying to turn women into men. In the sitcoms I watched after school, women’s lib was a frequent source of gag material. Feminists were usually either humorless battleaxes or misguided naifs who, after reading a single book on feminism, started smoking cigars and wearing three-piece suits with bowler hats. The men in these shows patiently endured their nutty antics, allowing the adorably misguided women to hold open doors and pay restaurant bills until they finally learned their lessons.

The message was clear: The women’s libbers were ridiculous and sad. If I became one, I would grow up to become a lonely, unloved woman.

I wanted to be loved, and I wanted to be admired for being pretty and stereotypically feminine—I had a Miss America lunchbox, and my favorite outfit was a pink puffy-sleeved dress with lace-trimmed anklets and patent-leather Mary Janes. But I also wanted the life promised to me by feminism. In an essay called “My Future,” I outlined my plans: I would become a writer or a commercial artist. I would live in an apartment in Cincinnati (the nearest big city), and I would have a roommate.

I didn’t know any real women who lived liked this. “My Future” was based on the one television show that understood my girlhood dreams, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and those groovy women’s libbers. The young women marching in the streets with “Sisterhood Is Powerful” banners weren’t ugly, and they didn’t seem crazy. They were fighting to make the world a better place for women. They were fighting for me.

So, yes, I loved the Barbie movie. I loved Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster for all the reasons people are saying—the dreamy pink sets, the radiant sincerity of Margot Robbie’s Barbie, the absolutely hilarity of Ryan Gosling’s Ken.

Mostly, I loved the movie for its girlhood fantasy of adult life—the fantasy I had, rather than the one the culture told me to have. When the movie begins, Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie wakes up in her Dream House and greets her amazing friends—Doctor Barbie, President Barbie, Supreme Court Justice Barbie. Ken is around, but Barbie is more interested in dancing with the other Barbies. In Barbie Land, you get to do exactly what you want, unfettered by parents, teachers or boys.

Then Barbie and Ken travel from Barbie Land to the Real World and discover the patriarchy—to Barbie’s horror and Ken’s delight. Barbie is objectified, dismissed, and made to feel small. Ken, after living his life in deference to Barbie, stumbles into a joyous land where men are in control. His self-image balloons as he watches the Real World men swaggering, high-fiving and talking over women.

That’s the part that got me. I loved the frothy giddiness of Barbie, but I was moved by the way the film connected me with my childhood self—and not just the part that wanted to have a dance party every night. When I was a kid, I was sure the women’s libbers would fix things for girls like me. They had plenty of time—“my future” was so far away.

And now here we are. Of course, a lot has changed. The Mary Tyler Moore Show has held up, as funny and smart to a 2023 viewer as a 1973 viewer. The shows that lampooned women’s lib—Laugh-In, Petticoat Junction, The Doris Day Show, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, for starters—are barely remembered time capsules.

I did indeed become a writer who lived in an apartment in a big city with a roommate. But my grade-school self would be shocked to learn that in the science-fiction year of 2023, a woman still has never been president. She would be very confused to find out that the thing that made women able to become unpregnant would be taken away. Or that the radiant women’s libbers, now old ladies, would be marching with signs that say, “I can’t believe I’m still protesting this shit.”

It's all been so much harder than we expected. Year in and year out, we make incremental updates to the same grim statistics. Women make less than 84 cents for each dollar men make. They are less than a third of Congress, less than a quarter of state governors, and 8.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Barbie had the highest-grossing opening weekend of any film directed by a woman, but that’s a significant qualifier. Last year, women were less than 15 percent of U.S. film directors. In the top films made from 2007 to 2019, women have only a third of the speaking parts. Most movies are about still about Ken World.

When I was a kid, I underestimated the opponents of women’s lib. They’ve successfully roadblocked a lot of progress and made it more difficult for us to create the lives we want. But they couldn’t stop us from wanting those lives. They failed to kill the dreams of the futures that we acted out in our living rooms, even if those dreams were channeled through dolls that reinforced damaging beauty standards.

So I have at least one happy message for my grade-school self: One day, in the very distant future, women and men of all political stripes will flock to a movie about a very problematic doll, and people will laugh at the patriarchy. This will make supporters of the patriarchy very upset. At long last, the joke will be on them.

What did you think of Barbie?