Barbie, the “Career Girl”

Barbie is turning 50.  Yes, she is an instrument of gender stereotype enforcement; she is almost exclusively marketed toward girls, and for these same girls Barbie is an unrealistic standard of beauty.  Nevertheless, there are a plethora of tributes to Barbie’s fiftieth, most of them revolving around fashion.  In an slightly unique approach, an MSN Lifestyle page takes a “nostalgic look back at some of the many careers Barbie has held — and remember how she helped us dream of the time when we would be ‘all grown up’ and leading exciting lives of our own.”[1]   Apparently, Barbie is a role model for life beyond fashion.

The page takes the viewer through each decade of Barbie’s existence.  It characterizes the eras in a typically nostalgic way and primarily through fashion. For example, Barbie’s 1961 profession is a nurse, not to demonstrate the casualties resulting from the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, but to showcase the “cat-eye glasses and peep-toe pump trends of the year.”  Granted, fashion as a tool for gaining insight into history is not inherently illegitimate, but isolating fashion from the culture in which it was worn renders the perspective alarmingly superficial.

The superficiality in MSN Lifestyle’s history-telling easily slips into misrepresentation.  In 1963, “Career Girl” Barbie is displayed benefiting from the Equal Pay Act; she “can rest assured she’ll remain a top-earning executive.”  This presentation of the Equal Pay Act downplays the unequal pay women have historically received in the workplace and presents the Act as maintenance of the just status quo.  And never mind the fact that, decades later, women’s earnings are only $.77 for every $1.00 earned by men.[2]  

Interestingly, there appears to be a slump in Barbie’s resume during the 80s.  In the 70s she is a surgeon, a lawyer-philanthropist Miss America, and an Olympic Gold Medalist.  After a brief stint as a fashion model in ’77, she survives the 1980s as an aerobics instructor, a rock star, and then a UNICEF ambassador.  It won’t be until the 1990s that she fulfills a job that requires education or provides a legitimate salary.  This may (unknowingly, I’m sure) reflect the backlash against the women’s liberation movement and second-wave feminism of the 60s and 70s.

And yet, as a consumer of Barbie in the 1990s, I do not recall any of my shapely, blonde dolls being career-oriented; perhaps they were occasionally a teacher or a babysitter, but for the most part my Barbies were either princesses or participants in leisure activities like surfing, playing guitar, or driving cars.  The arbitrary selection of Barbies for this lifestyle page tells a very incomplete, if not at times misleading, story.  Furthermore, the piece implies, if not extorts, the sweeping judgment that Barbie has historically been a positive role model for young girls.  History is being employed in this lifestyle page, not simply for nostalgic fodder, but to infuse value into a material object of consumption.

[1] MSN Lifestyle, “Barbie’s Careers Through the Years,” http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/just-dreaming/staticslideshowgh.aspx?cp-documentid=18253285&imageindex=1 (accessed March 9, 2009).

[2] National Organization for Women, “Women Deserve Equal Pay,” http://www.now.org/issues/economic/factsheet.html (accessed March 11, 2009).