If you know me, you know I LOVE Barbie. I have been a collector of her since I was a child. I got my first collectors edition doll for Christmas in 1989. I was 11 years old. Mom told me this was a special doll to look at, not play with. So it became a tradition for Christmas each year to receive the holiday Barbie for that year. I collected them from 1989 to 2000 or 2001.
Then, in 2024, Hollywood made a live action Barbie movie. I was really excited about it, but was also a little apprehensive about it. I was afraid it would be super woke and just boring. After a while, it appeared on HBO, so I decided to bite the bullet and watch it. I had heard things here and there about it, that it wasn't too bad. So I turned it on and watched.
I think it was overall a pretty good movie. A little silly at some points, but very well made. The message of the movie was so close to being perfect. In my opinion, I think the ending would have been better had Barbie and Ken been able to be equal, rather than having Barbie do everything and Ken just existing. Understanding that we can't do it all at once and we need each other for our individual strengths and weaknesses. And also recognizing that even in a place like Barbieland, things aren't perfect. And that's ok.
I don't think that Barbie was meant to make girls feel bad about their body. She wasn't meant to give girls unrealistic expectations of themselves or others. I don't know a single person who looks exactly like Barbie. Not even the girls who played the different Barbies in the movie look like Barbie. But I do know that Barbie was always meant to empower girls and women, and to remind them that they can be anything they want to be. You can literally be trained to do any job. And with only a very few exceptions, you don't even have to go to college or earn a degree to qualify. It's a beautiful thing, and we have Ruth to thank for it.
Barbie was such a revolutionary figure from the very start. I believe that Barbie truly does empower girls the world over.
On a side note, when I was on my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I had a companion from Russia. There were 3 of us together at this time. One day, the subject of Barbie came up, and Sister Tanigina mentioned that she never had a Barbie when she was young. She said that in her part of Russia, things like that were very rare when she was young enough to play with them. So we decided to buy her one for her birthday. She was so excited to have a Barbie doll of her own.
