it was summer A summer of Renault 5 without air conditioning or power steering. One of those who arrived at places by consulting a voluminous road map or by asking questions by rolling down the window with the handle. There were five of us (parents, daughters and grandmother) with the windows down. In those times of Transition it was also hot. a lot And the girls played with dolls. Like now. Although I want to believe that this type of toy no longer understands genres.
Like my older cousin and sister, I had my own Nancy, that mannequin doll that Famosa launched in 1968, the most desired of them all. Until that hot summer of the late 70s, when I discovered Barbie Superstar in the window of a toy store in Puigcerdà, dressed in a fabulous long pink dress, pink shoes with vertiginous heels and an equally pink ruffled boa.
This marked a before and after in my childhood leisure life, and also in Nancy’s. Because there were many of us girls who surrendered to the more adult silhouette of Barbie when it arrived in Spain almost twenty years after it was created by Ruth Handler, an entrepreneur and president of Mattel. But that Barbie had little empowerment. Her self-esteem was based on her sculptural physique and her long blond hair. He taught us to dress according to the occasion, launching us into a consumerism that still fills our wardrobe. And the past takes its toll, even if we don’t want it to.
Barbie has had no choice but to adapt to the times and Mattel has created dolls dressed as doctors, scientists or plane pilots in favor of equality, and also Barbies of all colors and sizes. Welcome the change, even if it is to reconcile with that doll from our childhood.
But the old image is hard to clean. That’s why now comes a blockbuster film that goes further and puts its finger on the sore of patriarchy. Sarcastic and funny, she shows us how pink and happy a matriarchy of Barbies would be. But even dolls are not so naive. The real world is still sexist and discriminatory. And this is how Margot Robbie’s Conscientious Barbie shows us, a film with a vindictive message and, let’s not be deceived, also a commercial one, because we can now relax and give the doll as a gift without remorse: today’s Barbie is a feminist. brilliant Like their dresses.
