--- title: A Feminist Defense of Barbie description: Being a Barbie-loving feminist might seem contradictory, but the truth is far more complicated canonical: https://time.com/6295515/barbie-feminism/ author: Sarah Seltzer article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-07-19T20:05:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:02:16.617Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: How Barbie Helped Raise a Generation of Feminists og:description: Being a Barbie-loving feminist might seem contradictory, but the truth is far more complicated og:url: https://time.com/6295515/barbie-feminism/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7b3373805aaae02f/698a3e98b21a9c2204507674/2.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Barbie Feminism og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Barbie Helped Raise a Generation of Feminists twitter:description: Being a Barbie-loving feminist might seem contradictory, but the truth is far more complicated twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7b3373805aaae02f/698a3e98b21a9c2204507674/2.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Barbie Helped Raise a Generation of Feminists > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: Margot Robbie and the "Barbie" Cast Are Here for a Barbie Challenge [Watch (HLS stream): Margot Robbie and the "Barbie" Cast Are Here for a Barbie Challenge](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/rnmcLo7q.m3u8) (10:00)  _Published 2023-06-27. Ahead of Barbie's big screen debut on July 21, the cast of the movie reconnected with their inner child and took on a "dress up your doll" challenge. Margot Robbie, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Hari Nef, and Alexandra Shipp all play different versions of Barbie._ by [Sarah Seltzer](https://time.com/author/sarah-seltzer/) ## Sarah Seltzer Jul 19, 2023 8:05 PM UTC  illustration by Katie Kalupson for TIME by [Sarah Seltzer](https://time.com/author/sarah-seltzer/) ## Sarah Seltzer Jul 19, 2023 8:05 PM UTC [Barbie](https://time.com/6294121/barbie-movie-popularity-impact/), that minx, invaded my home against my mom’s inclinations, as she did for so many Generation Xers and millennials. Our Boomer parents’ sensibilities were offended by her frivolous existence. Nonetheless, she wiggled her way in. My family legend has it that our apartment’s pioneering Barbie, outfitted in [spandex and leg-warmers](https://time.com/6293686/margot-robbie-barbie-inspired-press-tour-looks/), was a gift from a passive aggressive friend of the family, the same one who also “accidentally” got my brother and me boxes with lead paint on them. Regardless of Workout Barbie’s origin, she was followed soon thereafter by Astronaut Barbie, wearing thigh-high [hot pink boots](https://time.com/6290606/barbiecore-trend-history/) and a shimmery spacesuit, and then a third Barbie of unknown name, in a flowery dress, less tethered to the modern era and more ready to be absorbed into my pretend games of “olden times” and fairy tales. That was the turning point. Those first few dolls were soon joined by dozens of companions, including Barbie’s racially and culturally diverse pals, her little sister dolls, and one Ken. They arrived on birthdays and Hanukkah, gifts from school friends and relatives, and even occasionally from my parents. My collection became a focal point for playdates at my place. The dolls commandeered the drawer under my bed, and spread themselves to all corners of my room during the games my friends and I played with them, practically until we hit puberty. Read More: [How _Barbie_ Came to Life](https://time.com/6289864/barbie-time-cover-story/) --- ### More from TIME --- And yet even as I was sliding those ridiculous high heels on my Barbies’ ankles, I was also plotting the revolution, to the degree a child can. I was a pint-sized feminist, an advocate for [reproductive rights](https://time.com/6288526/abortion-laws-map-2023-dobbs-anniversary/), and a self-styled tomboy in homage to my favorite heroines of Y.A. literature. I was not actually a tomboy: I was a bookworm, obsessed with classics of girlhood like _Anne of Green Gables_ and[ _Little Women_](https://time.com/collection-post/6084576/little-women/), and also devouring nonfiction books about mythology, history, and even sports. At the same birthday parties where one friend would bestow me with a lacy pink Barbie outfit, another would buy me a book about “Great American Women” where I learned to admire very un-Barbielike figures such as Sojourner Truth, the Grimke sisters, Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt. That seeming contradiction—Barbie-loving feminist—long puzzled me. I’ve been mulling over Barbie’s impact on my psyche, basically since I stopped playing with her, and more recently, as Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming live-action [_Barbie_ movie](https://time.com/6289787/barbie-movie-history-mattel/) has put the doll at the center of the discourse. In the pages of a feminist ‘zine that friends started at the end of the ’90s, I argued in favor of Barbie, saying that those hours of [open-ended imaginary play](https://time.com/6287494/barbie-land-dream-house-movie-set-greta-gerwig/) she fostered helped build me into a creative person, and taught me to value independence, storytelling, and collaboration with friends.  Barbies on a ride Lawrence Lucier—Getty Images As an adult, and a parent, I think the truth is more complicated. I remember unboxing a Barbie and removing her accessories from their plastic slots with a kind of hungry acquisitive need. I remember the crazed, semi-competitive way my best friend and I would demand the very same Barbies from our parents. Now, when I wake up on Saturdays and scroll Instagram, I still trick myself into believing that a great bargain on outfits for the kids, or me, will fill a week’s worth of emptiness and exhaustion. Barbie culture helped indoctrinate us into the idea that [consuming, accessorizing](https://time.com/6294123/barbie-partnerships-crocs-burger-king/), having the perfect “stuff” would complete us, and thereby line Mattel’s pockets, because we were always left wanting more. I also remember how horrified I was when, at age 12 or 13, just after I had abandoned Barbie, I discovered that I was no longer growing taller, but instead had sprouted new hips. Suddenly, jeans and skirts didn’t fall straight down on me the way they did on all my Barbies, and I didn’t like this development (so to speak) at all. I was being welcomed into a lifetime of typical, but no less painful, body image angst. Of course, pernicious messages about consumption and beauty came from many places other than Barbie: television shows, movies, magazines, older people. But our Barbie dolls, roughly dressed, undressed, and reconfigured, had their role too. Criticisms of Barbie’s negative qualities have predominated discussion of her social impact: those silly heels, the pink car, the completely unrealistic body that would tip over in real life, the whiteness and blondeness, the privileging of fashion and beauty over brains. And yet, so many of us played with her—and [we’re all going to see the movie](https://time.com/6294121/barbie-movie-popularity-impact/) anyway, according to the ticket sales ahead of the July 21 release. We will see it, with the gleeful anticipation I used to feel at school when I knew I had a playdate coming up that day, and the Barbie drawer would be raided. Read More: [The Real Reason _Barbie_ Might Dominate the Box Office](https://time.com/6292203/barbie-box-office-women-movies/) Whatever our adulthood looks like today, whether we are gender nonconforming or ultra-feminine or parents or career-oriented or all of the above, anyone who is not a man has to spend their days negotiating with the ever-present forces of consumerism and monolithic beauty culture that Barbie embodies. Nowadays, we can’t just chuck the aspects of society we despise down the laundry chute, as we did with our Barbies. But maybe we wish we could. Perhaps that constant negotiation explains why, as generations have (by and large) embraced queerness, feminism, anti-capitalism and, yes, wokeness, they also feel a kind of [ownership over this problematic doll franchise](https://time.com/6293844/barbie-oppenheimer-internet-phenomenon/). Barbie’s plastic-ness, her financial accessibility, her generic quality, meant we could turn her into whatever we wanted—including an avatar for our most violent, strange and wildly imaginative tendencies. Kids tied up their Barbies, dismembered them, acted out conflicts, and held orgies, too. Ken was an afterthought, a joke (a fact the film seems eager to play with). Whether whole or headless, whether we revered her or destroyed her or both, Barbie was subsumed into our own ideas about how to play. Unlike paper dolls or American Girl dolls that came attached to a historical era, or were too expensive to own or play with, Barbie was a _toy_ as soon as she came out of the box: we could cut her hair, change her outfit, and immediately make her over in whatever image was on our mind, or forget about her entirely. It was a bit rebellious, taking a doll that was supposed to look a certain way and making her behave _our_ way.  Barbie (Margot Robbie) dances the night away Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures [Mattel’s other ’80s franchises](https://time.com/5684822/mattel-gender-neutral-doll/), including the She-Ra dolls that I loved before I got into Barbie, didn’t have this moldable quality. At my house, Barbie was almost always starring in epic, days-long imaginary games full of love affairs, violence, and betrayals. For others, she was sitting around boardrooms or visiting beauty salons or getting murdered by pirates, or being a murderer herself. Barbie provided an easy way for kids, mostly girls, alone and in groups, to control their own narratives, make up their own stories, and indulge in their own fixations. And in that way, she made the idea of adulthood, and womanhood, something younger girls could try on and experiment with, or simply fire down the hallway like a blonde torpedo. I don’t want to get too in the psychological weeds about the cultural ubiquity of girls torturing their woman-shaped dolls, or making these comically busty avatars of womanhood hump each other, but it sure is _interesting_, isn’t it? And perhaps worth unpacking over drinks, after we see the movie together. **_Out now:_** _T_ _IME’s new special edition about Barbie is available at newsstands and_ [_here online_](https://amzn.to/3sLH7bn) Many wonderful films about girlhood make boys and puberty [the focal point](https://time.com/6269629/best-puberty-movies/), or dwell on girls’ relationship with their mothers. But for so many of us, playing with Barbies was about our relationships with ourselves and our friends, and all the ways those experiences blended with the broader culture of materialism and femininity. That’s why a smart, feminist director like Gerwig offering her take on Barbie—and doing it in a way that appears to foreground ambivalence, humor and neon—feels so exciting. It’s not like we expect Gerwig to offer a full-throated critique of Barbie—the movie, after all, is produced by Mattel. But what matters is how the film appears to recognize Barbie’s simple presence in so many of our young lives. It means millions of girls’ intense, silly, and personal childhood play is being acknowledged, given the royal Hollywood treatment, and taken both as seriously and unseriously as we took our Barbies themselves. _Seltzer is the author of the novel The Singer Sisters (Flatiron, 2024) and an editor at Lilith Magazine_ ## Transcript My Barbie needs more time. Okay. Not looking punk, I don't think I'm in love with what I've done. I think my farthest of hurts all expectations and I just I'm so proud. I don't want it. I don't want can Oh my God. Okay, now what is punk? I'm not a fashionista you guys but I think I know Punk. When I see it. I actually do. Love the look, I don't know if it's but I thought about it. So I would I would love like a quick 45 minutes with like I need a Lynn bread and then I can really show you what this rust can look like on a girl with blue hair. To me, no, offense to the Met Gala. This is what I Met Gala outfit. Looks like I chose a big helmet shoes. Are a bag. We're open at 7, the band with a little bit of crack out this one hops. Wow. I feel like she's, she's got like a contract. She can fly back and they want to just like it's like they were the mini dresses cuz they're not trying to do the gown dress code, but they left like the edges exposed. I thought about sunglasses but then it's like, you know, she's an up-and-coming independent film actress. So how are the Getty Image Photography is going to recognize her if she wears sunglasses? So, she took them off last second, Pirates. Understanding of this world is so nuanced. I have no recollection of playing with the pain but don't tell him that I love him. No, very handsy. So cool. Come on, Barbie. Oh my God. So hard to get her feet. How do we have? The dexterity is kids to do that? We had, we had nothing else to do. Is it a four-year because she facilitated the end of the writers strike. My Barbie is obviously a singer at this moment. She's hitting the high note. I am a Barbie girl. So mine has infiltrated either the government of North Korea or an alien invasion and their government. She's warned their outfits and she's worked herself like a Manchurian Candidate into the highest levels of leadership and taking them down from the inside because they took it from her, okay? It wasn't. And she lost the back of her pants and a fire, okay? So but you went straight from that to the time cover. Shoot. Yes. My Barbie wrote a book called women. It's about women, any idea you've ever had about women, any problem you've ever had with a woman, she she fixed all of it with her book and she's just signed a deal with Netflix for a film adaptations called woman. She's kind of the face of women everywhere, but she's wearing her sunglasses because she's like, who am I my email? And my lady is the first female president of the United States. And she wear policy so she's wearing a l movie. That's right. I definitely have worried about you be going up, Dale kind of turned into weird, Bobby off. I got played with a few times. What's cooking good-looking welcome, welcome to my house. Let me see, weird Bobby. We mean like a Bobby has been played with too hot and the real world and they hands up being a little messed up and maybe they got some Crayon on their face and scissors. Markers other stuff, you know, you missed your Barbie. I heard someone who looked like, whoever it was was amazing and I really don't like it when someone else does my hands or feet or maybe I was trying to do my earnings but yeah, the foot should I got all three of us like how many times but like the Chrissy Teigen sweet nothing like it was a screen. Grab of my feet in front of the shower and it was like I need to know everything about this. Like how many take? So she harness with Lola and we probably did? I don't know? Maybe eight takes. No, I didn't wasn't wearing a harness but I did hold on to like a ball when I got back to that. I was still steady holding, it would be like tomorrow. It probably is I'm at once again. Joker. Okay, she is a superhero. Her name is hot girl. She gets really hot. Literally it's baked potato Couture. She's burning evil. Evil know. She's burning that she's melting it down to liquid. Heat proof glass. We're going to see My superhero is. That's her name of the ability to inflict cramps on men. So she dress. Provocatively, the pimp then and then she's like texting. So he his superpower is to be invisible, which is why he's not wearing anything? Because when he goes invisible then you see the clothes walking around. So he has to be naked all the time with my boy, like to see a no, because it's attached to it goes invisible, might be out for the count. This is some sandwich girl. Okay, so her superpowers, you always have to give to someone who needs food, but the problem is, she also looks like a flasher when she goes up to someone and she's like a, you want something? I got something for you and they're like, they run away and she's like, oh, it's a sandwich here. Like we don't believe you and she's like, This is animal, she can turn into any type of animal giving cheetah, she's giving leopard. She's giving polar bear realness instead of like roaring. She does run. So she'll be like I'm impressed with the creativity. That's been put on display here and has been brought out of all of us. Grown people just the presence of the dolls and the clothes it really is an incredible thing. I needed me to it's a productive. 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