In Mary F. Rogers’ article, Hetero Barbie?, she questions Barbie’s
sexual identity and evaluates her appearance as well as her users. Barbie tends to exaggerate her woman figure
by having large breasts, very skinny waist, extremely long legs, and flat hips. This figure is an unrealistic proportionate
woman figure and may seem to imitate the ideals of a drag queen. Her wardrobe is filled with sparkling, beaded
blouses, high heels, diamond headdresses, and gowns which also suggests the
possibility that Barbie is a drag queen. Barbie’s social settings also suggest
the opposite of a stereotypical heterosexual lifestyle. She comes off having a single lifestyle by
traveling the world, having numerous occupations, and not being married to
Ken.
Moreover, Rogers explains “Barbie
is relatively free of such
heterocentrism and heterosexism and thus holds relative appeal for nonheterosexual people, especially gay men”
(Rogers 129). Barbie is open to nonstraight sexualities. Barbie may be a lesbian, a bisexual woman, or
asexual. Barbie never comes out and
tells its customers the true sexual identity.
In addition, Rogers puts light onto
the users of Barbie. Michael Osborne has been a Barbie doll collector since he
was thirteen years old and has over 300 dolls.
One would assume Osborne is a nonheterosexual male that enjoys playing
with Barbies. Barbie’s users are generally young girls but there are always
exceptions.
As a young girl, I used to enjoy
playing with Barbies, and I do not believe that they acted as a bad role model
for me. I did not try to base my looks off of hers and never tried to imitate
her unrealistic proportionate figure. I
simply enjoyed dressing her up and playing with her in the dollhouse. Barbie
allowed me to express my imagination by designing outfits and building her
mansion. I never thought about the idea
of Barbie being a drag queen before reading this article, but now I am
beginning to agree that she imitates this appearance and behavior. It is interesting to think that Barbie may be
a lesbian or a bisexual woman that never actually was in a relationship with
Ken.
I was also a big fan of Barbie. I collected the special ones and loved to dress her up. As children I don't believe that we ever really concerned about the sexuality or preferences of Barbie even though Ken was intended to be her partner. Though I can't outright blame the creators of Barbie for my poor body image, it's very possible. Maybe subconsciously we interpreted Barbie as the perfect woman and wanted nothing more than to be like her. And as me and women like me grew up we soon realized that this was completely unrealistic.
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