Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Kirill Velesov
[REGNUM] At the end of March, actress and public figure Olga Budina said in an interview with the online publication “Paragraph” that Barbie dolls are one of the reasons for the decline in public morality.
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“Barbie doll is a whore, that’s all. As soon as the child was removed from the toys for girls and Barbie was shoved in, resembling anyone but a child, we immediately slipped in a different model of behavior,” Budina said.
If a girl, the actress continued, plays at baby dolls, at children who need to be swaddled, fed, rolled in a stroller, that is, take care of a small doll, this develops the qualities of a mother in her.
“All Barbies are made on the principle of an immoral young girl with reduced social responsibility,” Budina is sure.
The dolls of her childhood - baby dolls, the actress said, were made in the correct proportions and copied an infant. The Barbie doll was originally created for destructive purposes.
| Meh. Barbie when invented was the latest version of a fashion doll, whose purpose was to teach young girls to understand what fashionable outfits of the time looked like, and to practice the sewing skills needed to create such clothes for their own wardrobes later. The concept — for children — dates back to the 18th century or so, I believe… certainly no later than the Napoleonic period, but it was standard equipment for seamstress shops for several centuries before that to show customers design options. I did not have a Barbie as a child, but I think my mother thought children should not worry about being fashionable, and there would be time for me to learn sew later. My darling mother-in-law, child of a large family of beautiful and artistic fashionistas, introduced the trailing daughters to Barbies when they were in pre-school; they played with the dolls with her, and happily received gifts in the theme from her and their aunt, but had outgrown the activity long before they hit the pre-teen years, with no harm done. |
“It is impossible to destroy a state where there is a strong family. And in a strong family, the mother, the woman, is always the moral tuning fork. She knows how to be a homemaker and will not strive to marry an immoral person,” Budina explained her position.
MALVINA INSTEAD OF BARBIE
A similar statement was previously made by a member of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Maria Butina : she said that she does not consider it correct that foreign toys or toys “with a foreign message” are purchased for Russian kindergartens.
Butina also criticized the Barbie doll directly: after the release of the musical comedy of the same name by Greta Gerwig, which received an Oscar for best song, she said that dolls should be removed from the Russian market.
“Barbie, together with the Mattel company, must be removed from the market, because they are bringing the LGBT issue into Russia (an extremist movement whose activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation - Ed.),” she said in an interview with the Duma TV parliamentary channel.
According to Butina, it is necessary to return Soviet toys; the most popular among them, according to her, was the Malvina doll.
The Russian Ministry of Education has repeatedly stated the conceptual connection between the Barbie doll and LGBTQ+ people - back in 2002 and 2016. The ministry's proposal said that Barbie "has a harmful effect on the psyche of girls, encouraging them to consumerism and attraction to the opposite sex."
NEW TIMES - NEW TOYS
Barbara Millicent Roberts, whom everyone knows by her diminutive name Barbie, is a doll that top managers of the American company Mattel Ruth and Elliot Handler invented in the late 50s.
Barbie truly became a novelty and a phenomenon among girls' dolls - she was not a child, a baby, but a young girl, a friend or a role model.
The 60s saw the peak of conceptual art in painting, performance and musical theater, and therefore the doll, which almost immediately achieved unprecedented commercial success, could not exist just like that, without history.
Over time, she got a house, a husband, and most importantly, a profession. Gradually, Barbie turned from an anonymous beauty with a conventionally ideal appearance into a woman with a profession and a craft.
Among Barbies there were ballerinas and doctors, businesswomen, singers, female astronauts, athletes and politicians. The doll symbolized the visibility of women in the profession and invited girls to model their “ideal” future.
Over time, Barbies appeared that resembled famous women - Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Vivien Leigh, Kate Middleton, Audrey Hepburn, Natalia Vodianova and many others, including even a Barbie in a hijab, depicting the American fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad.
"INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR" AND UNREALISTIC STANDARDS
Over more than half a century of history, Barbie has accumulated many claims. In some countries, for example in Iran (the doll has been banned there since 2012, when the United States and its allies imposed unprecedented sanctions against the country, and Tehran responded by stopping the sale of oil and gas to Western states).
In other countries in the Middle East, the doll has also been criticized for its “imposition of the American way of life,” its sexualized image and “inappropriate behavior.”
Feminism's claims against Barbie are paradoxically similar: the doll shows an idealized female body and its unrealistic standards. Both conservatives and left-liberals in this case recall the prototype of Barbie: Ruth Handler created her, inspired by the image of Lilly, the heroine of German comics “for adults” popular in the 50s.
Barbie dolls seemed unrealistic, or rather unadapted, at the dawn of their popularity in countries where the blue-eyed blonde was not the most common type: in Japan, Brazil, South Africa. There, Mattel noted sales failures.
SCANDALOUS CINEMA AS AN ENGINE OF TRADE
Interest in the doll has noticeably faded in recent years, but Gerwig's film - one of the two most high-profile world premieres of 2023 (along with Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer ) - saved the situation.
It came out bright, controversial and scandalous, the main characters - Barbie and her lover (in the original story, but not in the film) Ken were played by world-class stars - Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Composers Andrew Wyatt and Mark Ronson wrote a soundtrack that featured several undeniable hits, and almost everyone was talking about the film.
At first, Gerwig’s “Barbie” was unconditionally called a “feminist comedy criticizing capitalism,” but upon closer examination it turned out that the story tells a completely different story: the antagonists from the Mattel company (the case when the main thing is not to expose themselves), from the cruel and senseless the worlds from which Barbie tried to escape remained victorious, like that same capitalist “American Dream,” and the struggle for the rights of both women and men was depicted as grotesque, awkward, and essentially unnecessary.
In Russia, the film was much criticized for its immorality and vacuity.
Film critic Denir Kurbanjanov called it “Gerwig’s pink fantasy” and “a musical pop song with dancing girls,” the popularity of which was ensured by “Gosling’s pumped up torso.” There were many publications that the film would not be shown in Russia or would be banned, but this did not happen.
Conservative critics in the West, in particular political scientist, writer and lawyer Ben Shapiro, accused the film of "crazy, vile hatred of men and everything even remotely connected with them."
There is another interpretation of the main idea of the film. Billed as a statement in favor of women's rights, the film actually cruelly ridicules them.
The exaggerated “feminine” world in which Barbie exists initially and to which she almost returns after wandering through our patriarchal reality looks obviously unfair, empty, caricatured and ridiculous.
At the same time, the “world of men” that Ken, freed from matriarchal oppression, is building, where women turn into American housewives of the post-war baby boom era, does not cause rejection.
Some film critics and commentators have found a conspiracy explanation for this. Ostensibly, the film, which exploded a year before the US presidential election, actually makes fun of the values of the Democratic Party and plays into the hands of Donald Trump's election campaign.
Criticism does not mean failure. One way or another, the film revived the fading sales of Barbie dolls (in Russia, for example, they grew, according to various estimates, by 11–24% compared to 2022).
It is still unknown whether Barbie will be banned in Russia, the discussion is ongoing. In the State Duma, not only Maria Butina spoke out on the topic of scandalous dolls, but also deputy Vitaly Milonov, who called them “a stupid mixture of pin-up girls and [prostitutes].”
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