Friday 29 March 2024

Barbie comes of age

I remember as a little girl that whenever I used to play with my beloved Barbie, it was not to pretend that I was going to get married to Ken or to wear a Princess dress. Instead, I used to pretend I was living in my own apartment with some (very vague) high-flying career. So I’m glad to see that Mattel, the company which makes Barbie, has finally stopped perpetuating female stereotypes and recognized the fact that little girls have big dreams too.


In a way it’s a shame that it has taken so long for the makers of the most famous doll in the world to realise this. The fact is that not all girls want to grow up to be “princesses” and have Ken sweep them off their feet so that they can cook him tiny little meals in their tiny little kitchen. Not that there is anything wrong with having the they-lived-happily-ever-after fantasy. The problem is when this is the only dream of the future which gets stuffed into little girls’ heads. The social conditioning starts very early and it is no wonder that you sometimes meet grown women who say they have been planning their wedding in their heads since they were 12 years old. Again, there is nothing wrong with that, per se, but it is when it is the ONLY thing they have been imagining for their future that it gets worrying. For, think about it, what can possibly compete with a full-blown megawatt production of a wedding in which you are the star of the show for a whole day? Surely not real life.

Real life tends to become messy, and yes eventually boring and routine and tedious, especially when you come home and no one feels like cooking and the breakfast dishes are still in the sink because you both left home in a hurry to try and unsuccessfully beat the morning traffic.

It is at these times, I suspect, that many couples look glumly at each other a few years down the line and wonder: is this it? Women are especially prone to huge disillusionment because they are the ones who have been nurtured on the fantasy that a relationship and marriage are an end to themselves and that that should be enough for them to be fulfilled as people.

So when they start feeling restless and edgy and unhappy, they blame their spouse rather than understanding that perhaps by investing 100% of themselves into the idea of “being married”,  they have set themselves up for highly unrealistic expectations.

The perils of getting married just because everyone else seems to be doing are especially felt by women in that age group between 23 – 30 when it can be very difficult not to get carried away by wedding fever. How many couples do you know who have plunged headlong into marriage even though deep down in their bones they knew they were doing it for the wrong reasons?

So thank you Mattel, for showing little girls that they need to use their imagination not only to dream about their perfect wedding, but even more importantly, to fantasize about what career they want to have when they grow up.

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