"BARBIE" FATIGUE

So apparently there’s some movie about a doll coming out this week. Seven-year-old me would be very, very excited. Seven-year-old me would have known to suppress that excitement and go back to sorting my hockey cards which I spent all my allowances on—a photo, a bunch of player stats and piece of gum that looked and tasted like pink cardboard. That was the only pink a young boy could indulge in. 

 

For months now, we’ve been inundated with “Barbie” hype, the Warner Bros. marketing team sparing no dime and no tie-in to get us psyched to see it. When the trailer came out, every gay guy I follow on Twitter had to tweet about it. (Likes matter.) I may be confused due to the incessant Barbie blitz, but I think there was a day or two when you could photoshop yourself into a Barbie doll box and/or give your face that coveted, tanned plasticized look. So much cheaper than Botox and facelifts.

 

Don’t mistake me for a sourpuss. I’m fine with a “Barbie” movie. Like most gay men, I’m even finer with Ryan Gosling in a “Barbie” movie. Those abs, that snark. Much better than sitting through his attempts to sing in a musical. I don’t know anyone other than me who was gaga over “La La Land,” but my saying his voice was better than Pierce Brosnan’s in “Mamma Mia” is not high praise. I assume the Barbie movie’s PG-13 rating is artificially inflated from a G rather than edited down from an R so hip Gen Xers and all those gens that follow don’t think it’s kiddie fare for American Girl doll lovers. How much sexual content can there be when neither Barbie nor Ken has private parts?

 

When I was growing up, the closest I got to dolls was eyeing my sister’s collection. Sometimes she’d have a group of girls over and they’d show up with dolls for an afternoon of dolly drama. I was known to spy from the hallway which seemed more fun that taking my baseball glove outside and wondering what I was supposed to do with it. 

Thankfully, whenever I hovered near Barbie base camp, I was constantly told, Don’t touch. Being as I was a middle child who reveled in being a pest, I touched. I took. I didn’t have time to fit Barbie into different dresses or accessorize her with purses and high heels. Sure, I wanted to. I settled for the thrill of hearing my sister and her friends screaming my name. It was their tiresome tactic, designed to get my mother to intervene. Both my sister and brother matched my level of teasing with their reliance on tattle-taling. Just as I learned to hide my gayness—after I learned what that was—I masked my doll envy. I was a terror rather than a Tinker Bell. Just touching Barbie gave me a lift I couldn’t explain; the fact it never evolved to intricate doll play also made me inexplicably sad. I wanted to play with the girls. I wanted to be a girl. But no one talked about that. I was being ridiculous.

 

When Aqua released “Barbie Girl” in the ’90s, it was a huge hit. The dancefloor filled whenever it came on at Odyssey, the Vancouver gay bar I’d go to back in the day. (It’s gone. Same with The Royal, Denman Station and The Dufferin. Thanks, Grindr.) Still, the song did not suddenly make the Barbie doll hip to anyone older than a tween. It was a bouncy novelty, but it wasn’t an overt attempt to assert Barbie’s global domination. In fact, it displeased Barbie’s maker, Mattel, which sued for trademark and copyright infringement in Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc. (Mattel even owned a trademark for the color “Barbie pink” (Pantone 219D, color coordinates: #DA1884…the essential sort of gibberish for getting a TM).) Mattel alleged the song damaged Barbie’s reputation since she’s referred to as a blonde bimbo and sexualized (“Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky-panky,” along with other bland, suggestive references, typical of the average pop song). In the typical tit-for-tat arena of legal maneuverings, MCA counterclaimed, contending that Mattel defamed the company by comparing it to a bank robber. Shudders! Ultimately, the case was dismissed, the judge straying from legalese and opining, “The parties are advised to chill.” The decision came almost five years after the song’s release. Like most parodies, it had gone cold by then, relegated to the Land of Forgotten Ditties, bunkmates with Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck” and Weird Al’s “Eat It.”

 

Since I only had fleeting moments of Barbie bonding during my childhood, I resorted to finding my own play figures. There was a small window of time in which Matchbox cars subbed in, but pretending they talked was lamer than an episode of “Knight Rider” or “My Mother the Car.” Enter: Red Rose Tea. No, I didn’t play with tea bags. Let’s not make my youth that tragic. Instead, the tea company included a small ceramic animal figurine in its tea boxes. People started collecting them. I spent hours playing with a zoo’s worth of precious beasts, letting my beaver chat up my giraffe, sometimes using one of my Matchbox cars to transport animals from North America to Africa. That’s right, my cars floated and flew when they weren’t driving off my desk which served as a precarious cliff.

 

So, yeah. Playing with dolls was not okay, but my parents let the figurine fun go. What could they say? They’d fostered it via family viewings of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” every Sunday night. I honestly think all that play contributed to my becoming a vegetarian years later. I was a veritable Dr. Doolittle. I talked to the animals! How could I turn around and eat them? 

 

I’ve been waiting for some pushback over the “Barbie” movie. Perhaps Warner Bros. has too. Controversy, after all, is good for ticket sales. Maybe they need to YouTube a stage full of drag queens, donning their own interpretations of Barbie. Maybe one queen needs to have a dildo she pulls out of her Barbie pink (TM) purse or read the picture book, William’s Doll, to a four-year-old planted in the audience. That’ll rile the rabid anti-wokers (who fail to see they’re a major cog in the reviled Cancel Culture). “Boycott ‘Barbie’!” Kid Rock will shoot up a pile of dollies. The three people who hadn’t heard of the movie will get their tickets. (Pity the poor theater owner who doesn’t get to screen the film.)

 

Wasn’t there a time when there was a societal Barbie backlash? Didn’t we turn against vapidness and glamorized whiteness? Didn’t we blame that damn doll for helping Paris Hilton rise to fame? That has to be worth at least a few demerits. I haven’t seen any feminist outcry. Part of it is on account the film is directed and co-written by a woman, the accomplished Greta Gerwig. I presume there’s a wink-wink to Barbie’s glamor, a reincarnation of those old Enjoli perfume commercials with a feel-good message about how a woman can have it all (except for equal pay…let’s be reasonable).  

 

I’ll be glad when the movie finally rolls into theaters Friday, Barbie taking her place in Barbie-pink(TM) convertible Corvette, all my gay followers on Twitters rushing to gush or gut the flick based on whichever way the court of popular opinion blows. I’ll watch it at some point. I don’t feel an urgency to be the among the first. Heck, I might even wait until it finally makes it to the only streaming channel I wish to pay for. 

 

Fun fluff, I hope. Perhaps it’ll be filled with stinging barbs about global warming, galoots who salivate over conspiracy theories and America’s devotion to gun culture (a cameo by GI Joe?). Profound “Barbie”? Relax, I didn’t get my hands anywhere near the script. 

 

Frankly, I just want the marketing blitz to stop. I’m passing on Barbie ice cream, a Barbie backpack from The Gap and a possible Airbnb stay at Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse. I don’t need an Instagram boost that badly. (Follow me @gregoryjameswalters! I’m almost at four dozen followers!) I think the needless Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice song, “Barbie World,” with its heavy sampling of “Barbie Girl” has already fizzled. I suspect Burger King’s Barbie Combo (burger with pink sauce (eww!) and a strawberry milkshake) won’t spread beyond its base in Brazil. 

 

I’ll let “Barbie” be. If anyone wants to get me really excited, tell me there’s a Red Rose Tea animal figurine movie in the works. I see it as a raucous action-adventure film, with compelling commentary on endangered species, veganism and, yes, global warming. I googled and got nothing. Go figure.