Barbies

My daughter Hannah’s Barbies are excited today. One of them has been chosen to be the first woman rabbi of Israel. They’re all going to the rabbi store together to pick out the special clothes the chosen Barbie will need for her new job.

As I listen to Hannah playing, I laugh to myself, thinking of how worried I was when I gave in to her pleas and bought her first Barbie. Even though I had Barbies as a child and played happily with them for hours, I’d grown uncomfortable with them as an adult. Their gravity-defying breasts, their anatomically-impossible waists, their permanently high-heeled feet, had come to seem dangerously anti-feminist. I worried about the unspoken message they gave young girls about the way their bodies should look and vowed that no daughter of mine would own one.

But then I had an actual daughter with her own desires and a Barbie was one of them. With a fair amount of trepidation, I bought her one for her 4th birthday. She tore off the wrapping paper and squealed with delight. I helped take the package apart, cutting the plastic ties around Barbie’s neck and waist that attached her to the cardboard. She was wearing a bathing suit, so all of her objectionable body parts were easy to see.

Before I handed the doll to Hannah, I told her that I wanted to talk to her about it first. With admirable patience, she looked at me expectantly.

“You know what Mama looks like without clothes, right?”

Hannah nodded solemnly. 

“My breasts don’t stick out straight like this, do they?”

She giggled.

“And I don’t have feet that are shaped like the inside of high heels, do I?”

Another solemn nod.

“Please remember that Barbies don’t look like real women. Real women’s bodies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. But none of them have breasts or feet like this. Do you understand?”

I hand the Barbie to Hannah, who looks at me gravely and says:

“Don’t worry, Mama, she’s only a doll.”