Let’s not Barbie

That’s right! Let’s not talk about Barbie but its patrons, the audience. Why? Because that’s where the real story lies.

My sister is a Barbie patron. Or at least she was, growing up. Now, I can’t exactly remember how Barbie came to be in our family, but my sister had one. It came in a pink box, see-through on the front, and had a set of belongings including a green hairbrush (which stayed stashed among her things long after the doll was gone).

I imagine my sister must have pestered my parents until she got a Barbie. Her friends owned the doll and the TV advert crooned between soaps my mother watched: Hey babe, Barbie!

I imagine too, that it must have been my Nini, who exported the Barbie to my sister. It was quite the centre of my sister’s attention for a long time-- an answer to a middle-class girl’s prayer for the doll of her choice. She’s been the only person in our home who has ever owned a Barbie (interestingly, my brother had a Ken, but he didn’t need it beyond a day).

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When I was growing up, Barbies must have been beyond my parents’ means, and so I had instead, the likes of: a dog and a bear and a big baby boy, the size of an infant, who would laugh if you pressed his tummy. Now, why were little girls given babies as toys, I have never understood. It does seem like a cuteness-coated euphemism to nourish the “nurturer” in little girls, as the film also mentions.

I don’t remember having much to do with my toys, however. I think I was more obsessed with collecting marbles of all colours even if I never won a game. And I was pretty good at jackstones. So, something like a Barbie would have had no place in my daily. When my sister obsessed over her doll, I couldn’t really relate. She even went to the extent of having my aunt sew sequined dresses, and knit a jumper for Barbie. And so, when the film released, she had to go!

As we headed into the theatre, we started to get hit by splotches of pink. First, a couple of girls, headed the same way as us, dressed in pink. Then, by the time we got to the popcorn stand, there was a steady flow of excited audience in pink jumpsuits, fuchsia minis, pale pink shirts and skirts, dirty pink shrugs and bright pink scarves and scrunchies to validate coloured dresses. I thought I had imagined the colour code, until I was steeped in a sea of the pink army.

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At the pop-corn queue, I struck a conversation with my fellow Barbie goers: So, you played with Barbie, when you were little? Most of the girls asked: Hajur? I said: Barbie. They chorused: Oh, the doll? Yes, of course!

I sauntered around, throwing the same question at more girls, and they all said, yes.

Inside the theatre, my companion by my right elbow was a woman in her 30s, who had come to watch the film on her own. She showed signs that the matinee show was the perfect hour of escape for her. She enjoyed a full tray of nachos, popcorn and coke as she laughed at the slapstick bits between stuffing her cheeks. (Like me, if you too are into going to the movies alone, you are familiar with the catharsis this woman experienced!) I am from Biratnagar, she shared during intermission. “I couldn’t wait to watch this!”

When Margot Robbie made her first appearance, the audience clamoured. Ryan Gosling skated, sighed and grooved and the clamouring got louder. The film went quickly from being a corporate capitalism epiphany to a battle between the sexes, as real life relationship terms got endorsed: long-distance commitment-casual!

There were many moments when the audience hummed and cheered as a collective force and I remember thinking-- this is what it must mean to be young! When America Ferrera delivered her monologue about the patriarchy, girls brought their palms together. Interestingly, the monologue might as well have been a soliloquy, because to each woman the battle is hers alone. Or does delivering it amidst glamorised dreamy hues do something to carry the message to the masses, even if temporary?

So, who is Barbie then, I wondered? Is she Ruth Stalker’s attempt to immortalise her daughter’s name? Or is it Greta Gerwig, one of the best directors of our day, doing Mattel’s bidding by showcasing political correctness to the world? Is Barbie every woman, as the film attempts to portray: “Mothers stand still so they can see how far their daughters can come,” Ruth tells Barbie, who is as much her baby as her own daughter Barbara.

We also hear Barbie say: I want to be an imagining and not an idea. And yes, the world created by a toy can be limitless, but it also means something different to every single child, as the interaction is influenced by colour, nationality and class.

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As we stepped outside the theatre, I asked my sister what had happened to her Barbie. She grinned: Remember the haircut? Eventually, she became dismembered and went into the trash. I nodded in disapproval as Kate McKinnon’s cropped hair and wacky outfit as Weird Barbie suddenly made sense to me.

At the parking lot, we ran into transgender activist Angel Lama. I asked her what she thought. She said: it’s a lot for me to process. And did she have a Barbie growing up? She said no.

I hopped behind my sister on her scooter and we hit the road, straddling our middle-class dreams after being transported back to reality from our willing suspension of disbelief in Barbieland.