“Barbie Helped Me Embrace My Feminine Side”: How This Iconic Doll Changed Your Life

With her wardrobe to make any influencer pale, her 250 professions – from surgeon to dog-sitter – Barbie is still today the most famous doll in the world. Every year, 58 million Barbies are sold worldwide.

Once criticized for her measures inaccessible to mere mortals, surpassed for her propensity to convey gender stereotypes, Barbie was able to make the breakthrough of inclusion in the mid-2010s by representing women in all their diversity. From now on, it’s the Barbies with disabilities, with vitiligo or transgender, and with skin of all skin tones, that kids can find on toy store shelves.

Having become a cult toy since its inception in 1959, Barbie has marked generations of children who have seen in her a gateway to the imagination, a role model or an escape from everyday life. While Greta Gerwig’s film (in theaters this Wednesday, July 19) might as well allow Barbie access to feminist icon status, we asked you what she had brought you, and she still brings you today.

Create an imaginary world

Barbie and I have been a great love story for a long time. I have a sister 2 years younger than me and children, we spent our best moments together playing barbie. One Christmas, I remember we both received a castle with Jasmine and Aladdin, as well as a “married” Barbie, with super long blonde hair and a crown that lit up when we pressed the button on the back. What we liked about this Barbie… We played with her whenever we could, sometimes we imagined stories that continued over time… I remember Tuesday nights when we could go to bed an hour later than usual to play together, until my parents’ movie commercial. Those were really good times!

I even continued to play Barbie until halfway through my college. I imagined a story that I continued every night with my Barbie and her Ken in my bed before sleep. These two dolls I always put away fixed in a box. We even had one Aladdin left, who lost his pants!

Ael

Read also: All about Barbiethe biting film with creepy humor with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling

Brunette Barbie doesn’t count for plums

I’m in kindergarten and I love Barbies. Only detail, which has tormented me since my young age: none of the Barbies in my collection look like me. They are all blond, while my hair is ebony black. When my birthday comes around, Max, a friend at the time, gives me a statement. I already have my priorities clear and I kill two birds with one stone: I promise to be his lover on the only condition that you find a brunette Barbie like me to offer me. I still have a little thought for her parents who had to give in to my whim and go to all the toy shops in the region to find me the famous (and unique) brown Barbie… But this search was not in vain since I found her one of my birthday gifts!

Elise

A safe place

As far as I can remember, I’ve always had Barbies, over fifty at least. New, used, collectibles… It doesn’t matter, most of them ended up in the same place: between my living room and my bedroom.

Besides being one of my favorite toys, The Barbies were mine safe place for me. Telling stories, imagining entire universes… It is also through these plastic toys that I discovered a part of me. I remember the day my mother gave me her old dollhouse that we had installed in the living room, it had become my bubble!

I also learned to sew or knit for my Barbies with my grandmother. I loved creating for them, telling myself that I could bring them as much as they gave me in return, which is the fact that I could fully express myself in any activity. .

Then, when I reached a certain age, I gave up everything, it generated great frustration in me. Later, many years later, while on a trip to Italy, while shopping, I came across a collection of Barbie clothes. It was a second revelation for me! Fuck youI remember being so elated that day! It’s like I’ve found the missing piece to my puzzle. Since that day, I have not let go of the world of Barbie, which continues to accompany me.

Eventually I grew up with it, it was a means of expression, gathering, peace, when everything was grey. I really remember feeling good all the time playing with my Barbies. These dolls have meant so much in my life that about 2 years ago, I decided to get a Barbie version of my whole family tattooed.

Sparks

A little too gendered toy

When I was younger, I had some Barbies, like all girls my age. My little brother, born a year after me, had Action Man. When we played together, Barbie and Action Man were a couple. All day, Action Man would save the world while Barbie took care of the house. So I was playing tidy up while my brother was fighting bad guys with his Action Man. The crazy thing is that we immediately had this cliché in the game when in our family it was always my father doing the cooking and cleaning while our mother had a role more “father of gender”. .

I loved playing with my Barbie, but I immediately preferred the “boy” games.. I found them more imaginative, I could play the villain of Action Man with Machiavellian plans while my brother was looking for solutions to stop me. I ended up leaving Barbie for Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, etc., until my little sister was born. But I don’t remember her particularly liking Barbies, for the good reason that they didn’t look like us. We were both brunettes with round dark eyes. It lacked representation in our time. We played games for girls, but different. We used to make pearl bracelets or Brazilian bracelets, we played Nintendogs on the DS… Today I still have my pink DS and my very first Game Boy Advance with my very first game: Secret Agent Barbie. That’s a really good game! So Barbie has always been back and forth in my life. I am happy to see the new, more inclusive representations that exist today and I look forward to seeing Greta Gerwig’s film.

Emilia

Take on your feminine side

I’m a boy and I loved playing with Barbie dolls when I was a kid.. First with those of my sisters, then mine that I asked for for Christmas and for my birthday, to the chagrin of my parents. My father, in particular, projected onto his only son an idea of ​​masculinity that didn’t suit me. He would have preferred to buy me soccer balls and he certainly didn’t expect me to like Barbies so much.

I have always been androgynous, I questioned my gender identity very early on and Barbie allowed me to experience my femininity by proxy. Having this little space, where I could imagine myself a bit of a princess, was liberating. I was able to take on my very feminine side when I was 9, 10, 11. As a teenager I kept my Barbies in the bedroom, I was never ashamed of them.

Today, at 23, I still have several of these Barbies in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house. And since, I finally found my Ken… Although in reality my boyfriend looks nothing like Ken!

Viviana

Unwavering support

I discovered Barbies in kindergarten and I immediately adored these dolls, I could play it for hours. In elementary school my passion continued. My two best friends were fans like me. I remember each of our birthdays, which were the best whywe could mix our 3 barbie collections to play together.

At the end of our sixth grade, when we were 12, one of these two friends was diagnosed with leukemia. We immediately understood that he was treatable even if the road to recovery would be long. During the school year that followed, she went home schooling and I came in every Saturday to play Barbie with her, as “a tornado of doll clothes has come through this room.”

At the same time, I began to realize that girls our age were starting to abandon Barbies. I remember thinking it was sad. We continued until she returned to university and, little by little, we also abandoned this little girl’s game.

But Barbie remains and will remain the best toy of my childhood, hours of memories with those who will attend my wedding on August 12, and the childhood bubble that helped us pass the first big test of our lives.

Margaux

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