| Life in plastic (not so fantastic) Barbie as a feminist icon? Seriously? Growing up in the era of scarcity, where even ‘foreign’ colouring pencils were a luxury, I lived in a Barbie-free world. By the time my daughters were growing up, Barbie had hit the Indian markets, and my younger one seemed happily obsessed with giving her doll an extreme haircut. I remember buying a Barbie for the daughter of feminist friends. The father had banned her as a Very Bad Doll for young girls, but her mom whispered to me that her daughter was dying to have a Barbie. I am happy to report, the young girl, like my own daughters, outgrew her Barbie phase, loathes pink and is now a sporty swimmer, singer and community dog volunteer. Conscious of changing times, and no doubt the very vocal criticism of the doll, toy-maker Mattel has allowed Barbie to evolve from its launch in March 1959 at the American Toy Fair in New York City. Back then, she was modelled on a German sex doll, even though she has remained resolutely sans genitals. From just sparkly, pink and impossibly thin, we saw the advent of astronaut Barbie (1965, yup, she beat Neil Armstrong to the moon), President Barbie (1992), even Barbie with Down Syndrome (April, 2023). Black Barbie didn’t arrive till 1980, though in 1968, her African-American friend, Christie did. By 2016, Barbies came in four body types, seven skin tones and 22 eye colours. On her 60th birthday, the standard Barbie had a reduced bust and less defined waist. As a tribute to real-life women achievers from Amelia Earhart to Maya Angelou, Mattel kept launching newer and newer tributes. [Read History Channel’s Barbie Through the Ages here] Feminist Barbie? Enter Greta Gerwig Gerwig made her directorial debut in 2017 with the critically acclaimed Lady Bird and followed through with Little Women (2019). Her indie credentials intact and burnished, she made it to Time’s 2018 most influential list. But Barbie is not an indie film. It’s a collaboration between Warner Bros—its logo coloured pink in deference to Barbie—and giant corporate toy maker Mattel. A film made on a budget of $145 million carries an embedded brand endorsement, though Gerwig is smart enough to make a few digs, inhouse jokes and criticism. In an interview to Time magazine, Margot Robbie who plays the lead and is also a producer spoke about telling Mattel’s CEO that the intention was to “honour the brand”. But, “if we don’t acknowledge certain things—if we don’t say it, someone else is going to say it.” So, hello Sugar Daddy Ken. Hello to teen girls in the real world ripping into Barbie as a “fascist”. And hello to the all-male Mattel boardroom that wants to keep Barbie, literally, boxed in. Ken’s short-lived imposition of patriarchy, following the lessons he learned from the real world, and the inevitable coup by the united sisterhood is funny, predictable and sad. But it is the film’s most straightforward and, for me, honest feminist message. Barbieland, where Barbie rules and can be what she wants to be from doctor to president, eating her perfect heart-shaped toast in her perfect dream home, is not a feminist utopia. Far from it. Feminism is not about relegating men to sidekick status—that is the sort of dangerous trope that male supremacists claim. Feminism is about equality. It is about dignity and respect. It really is that simple. The bottomline: Barbie is plastic and fantastic. The choreography, the bling, the music, the exuberance of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, all of it. But Gerwig keeps the feminism vanilla and bland, steering away from the more uncomfortable reality of the rollback on abortion rights in her own country, for instance. A one-size-fits-all narrative might work in Barbieland, but the real world is a lot more complicated and the struggle for equal rights cannot be the same for every geography, every race, every socio-economic position. In the end, whatever the film might or might not achieve, it will have breathed fresh relevance to a 64-year-old brand. Mattel should be pleased by that. | 
