"What will she look like?" [1]
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"What will she look like?" [1]
You can read
this in the headline of the web-site created to design the Barbie doll of your
"dreams". This is part of the official web-site of the most famous
doll of the twentieth century, and intentionally or not makes echo of one of the
most popular premises in our postmodern society: everyone can create her/his own
body. Therefore as the headline of the Barbie's web-site tell us that we can
create our own doll, our society teaches us that we can remake ourselves. Though
it tempted me from the very beginning to analyze this web-site having as
standpoint the similarities between the normalization of the female body in
popular culture and the model of beauty that the Barbie doll characterizes and
perpetuates, which I think are part of the same sexist discourse. I decided that
it would be far more interesting, from a personal point of view, to analyze
other features that appeared in this web-site. Its my aim to describe and
analyze the way other 'races ' are portrayed in this site, having in mind that
they are depicted through a female doll, in this case an adult and sexy toy that
is thought and designed ( at least in a broadly sense)
for a specific audience: female children from a
Susan Bordo writes in the introduction of her book, 'Unbearable Weight' :
"Consumer
capitalism depends on the continual production of novelty, of fresh images to
stimulate desire, and it frequently drops into marginalized neighborhoods in
order to find them. "[1]
What Susan Bordo wants to explain us with this statement is that the economic system that runs Western Society is based in the continual renovation and therefore it makes use of images non-belonging to its own Western realm. In order to accomplish this task of renovation, consumer capitalism does not doubt in framing and adapting images of non- Western cultures. Framing this images as exotica. One of the characteristics that have survived and been adapted from the eighteenth century till nowadays, it is a racial division among people. As Londa Schiebiger points out : " In 1789, The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen said nothing about race or sex"[2]. Then eighteenth and nineteenth Science began a quest that would help them to find natural differences between what was the norm: the European male, and those that did not conform it: non-European men and women, that as Schiebiger writes were regarded as deviations. So here we have that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Science tried to find a justification through natural foundations for the social inequalities between sexes and races. Black women were not regarded as human, so they were not studied in first stance. Moreover this ideas helped to the growing colonization of other continents for the European and the slavery trade, because if they were considered deviations and non-human beings then they could be made slaves and worked them in plantations. One of the stereotypes that have survived among others, it is the idea of the black women as temptress, because as Sander Gilman points out: "black women were the sexual icon of the nineteenth century". They embodied the temptress for the Victorian minds. Black women were regarded as treacherous, animalistic and sensual. In a broadly sense this stereotype is still alive in the minds of white people. How many times have you listen about the sexual characteristics of both black men and women?. During this century, Afro-American people in the United States have been seeking for a way to adapt themselves to what is a society ruled by a race with the supremacy over the rest. AS bell hooks it was not till the struggle for human rights in the 60's of black people and the rise of the "black power" that issues as the colonization of the minds of the black people was not brought to the political arena. As in the same period, the Second Wave of Feminism, began to be shaped in U.S.A, and feminist started to fight against a system that have used its power through the oppression by gender differences. Struggle against what have been a naturalization of the role of the women in the Western Society took shape, though as Black Feminism later criticized, the Second Wave forgot to add them in their agenda. It was during the Black Movement that issues as caste color and natural black hair where known. As bell hooks writes in " Back to Black" exists an internalized racism that constructs color castes hierarchies among black people based in the ideas of white racists in the nineteenth century, and that black people has internalized in the idea that what is closest to white is more positive. Therefore that black people that have an interracial family background, and have straight hair or lighter skin are closest to what the norm is: white. That Black women have been forced to bleach their skin chemically and to used hot combs to straighten their hairs is a fact that the Black Movement fought to eradicate, then black women left their hair to grow naturally. And here it is when black identity was linked to hair style and skin color. Those people with darker skin were marginalized among the own black people, but when the slogan: Black is Beautiful, appeared, darker black people that wore their hair natural were regarded as politically correct. On the other hand hooks points out that after the position of black women was a difficult one since black men continued preferring women with lighter skin and that after the 70's began a new type of comodification." In Selling Hot Pussy" hooks writes:
"According
to postmodern analysis of fashion, this is a time when commodities produce
bodies"[3]
Then fashion is producing the bodies of black females in a way that conform the norm. This is shape through the use of stereotypes of non-white people, seen as exotics and with a ethnic look. Black female is portrayed in fashion magazines usually with a background where they are depicted as part of nature or with an animalistic instinct. You do not see them wearing an Afro hair style but preferable with straight and long hair that falls in waves around their bodies. Black models as Naomi Campbell, who wears her hair straighten or in waves, or usually wears blue color lenses, that conforms the norm. But on the other hand it can be just a way to play with your own body, because its the terrain where you can shape and remake yourself as you want, and this is something that popular culture teaches us : we can choose our own bodies. Though this does not blur the homogenization that consumerist capitalism tries to accomplish.
The web-site, main subject of this paper, is called, as I pointed out above: My Design. The main aim of this site is to allow to that people that wish to get a friend of the Barbie doll designed by themselves. The web-site has a headline that says: What Will she looks like?, and it is divided in five parts: 1. Look, where you can choose the facial features of the doll. This is divided again in five parts: face, eye color, lip color, hairstyle and hair color. Here you are able to see how you designed doll looks. You have four different types of faces: light, ivory, tan and brown. Every one of them belongs clearly to a specific "race": light for Caucasian, ivory for Asiatic, tan for Latin and brown for Black.
Everyone of the facial models are portrayed differently: light with a smiling half opened mouth with red lips and a long face; ivory with black eyes, a half smile in her light red lips and an oval face; tan with brown eyes, a round face and very shy kind of smile; finally brown with black eyes, non-color in its lips, half smile and a rounder face than tan.
The next step in the creation of your designed Barbie doll friend, is the eyes color. Here you have three different colors: blue, green and brown.
Thirdly, you have to choose the lip color between three different tones, from lighter to more intense: angel rose, cranberry and very cherry red. I discover designing my own Barbie doll friend, that every color belongs to a different kind of lip.
straight: soft lip, stylish, pulled back and long wavy.
Finally you choose the hair color, that comes in six different types: golden blond, strawberry blond, fiery red, chestnut brown, brown and black. The six of them are shown through a straighten kind of hair.The other three parts of the site I am not going to describe them since my analysis in the way the look is portrayed. ( But if you want to see it and play a bit you just have to visit the web-site: http://www.barbie.com/mydesign )[1]
As we have seen above, in the description, in this web-site is created a framework where gender/power relations work. Here race matters since particular types of eye color and shape, nose shape, skin color and hairstyle are portrayed in a normalizing way. We just have to give a look to all these characteristics and arrive to the conclusion that this is a site where a certain kind of discourse about homogenization is working. As I pointed out before I am going to focus the analysis in the way black women are depicted in this web-site. Moreover I would like to make some associations between the kind of ethnic female beauty is being displayed here and beauty practices as cosmetic surgery because that both are linked in the kind of female beauty that is being considered as standard.
The Barbie doll is one of the icons of our times. Conceived in 1957 by Ruth Handen ( owner with her husband Elliot of the toy's brand Mattel), as a three dimensional adult- like a doll. The body was based on a German doll called 'Lilli" which was sold as a sex toy for men.[2] The name she got it from the daughter of the Handen couple, Barbara. In 1957 when it was presented in the New York 's toy's fair did not get much acceptance but after its release in 1958 and through a new media as the television where it was advertised, it became the image of the continuous changes in American society. From 60's till the 90's, Barbie has been changing its physical appearance to adapt to the new times, becoming as I said before an icon. As M.G. Gold writes in " Forever Barbie" during the 60's she became criticised by the Feminism but at the same time she could be seen as a model since she was not mother nor wife. Till 1980 a black Barbie was not released ( which was designed by Kitty Black Perkins a black woman). The black Barbie has a long straighten hair, and the same physical features that it counterpart. Though Mattel has released Barbie dolls for every main ethnic, this has not been out of polemic. Most of all this is debt to the kind of model that they are referred: the original, white, blonde and slender Barbie doll.
The Barbie doll is portraying a kind of female model that is not attached to reality, but on the other hand it is recognize as an icon. Her slender body, is part of what Susan Bordo describes as one of the characteristics of the gender dualism of Western Thought, activity vs. passivity. Women are depicted here as a naturalized, the appetite of women must be repressed, since women are not able to display a sexual desire, they are passive, while men are the active side. This slenderness brings connotations of fragility and lack of power. Women have to starve themselves in order to fit their role in the gender structure. Therefore Barbie is embodying the type of female body that rules our society, or let me say it with other words Barbie is the mirror of the type of female body that is being shaped in our society. The concept of feminine attractiveness is a focal point in our times. Women beauty is a way to objectify women. Women have to look like slim, feminine every moment of the day, without a pound of fat in their bodies, not wrinkles, eternally young.
As we have seen the black Barbie was released in the market in the 80's. It has not been out of critiques by part of the African-American community and most specifically by Black Feminism. As we have seen in the description of the web-site: Barbie my design, you can choose among four different types of faces, everyone of them portraying a specific 'race'. Here the black female is being shown with facial features that normalize a standard of female beauty which is the white. An important issue to analyse here is the way the hair styles correspond to a white type pf hair, not at all kinky or nappy hair, to add to the black female face. As Debbie Weekes points out though female beauty is a way to objectify women, it exists an assumption of Whiteness, the norm, therefore black and white women are objectify diferentially[3]. We can say that much of contemporary Western visual culture functions with an aesthetic of assimilation rather than alterity; an aesthetic in which difference is defined as an aberration to be removed rather than a social diversity to be cherished. Therefore the types of facial features that are displayed in this site are being assimilated by what the beauty standard is. As I read in one article by Mellany Reese, titled : 'Hair and Hate: Trying to get the kinks out"[4], not yet the Disney Factory has featured an story with an African princess. As she points out: "We need an African princess with an afro". She continues writing that the black Barbie has a weave and that she just looks like : 'the white doll with a chocolate covering'. I think that this makes echo of the way African-American feel in respect to the type of black female beauty that is being sold by consumerism capitalism. As we have seen hair for the black community in the United States has become a mark of their identity. African- American children that get the black Barbie can not identify themselves with the doll. There is other doll: Kenya, which is a black doll that you can change the hairstyle from afro, cornrows to straighten. Susan Bordo says that this is a good tool for black children in order" to create a future in which hair-straightening will be merely one decorative option among others"[5].
We can link the model of female beauty that is depicted in the web-site with a practice as cosmetic surgery. I think we can find a same patron that rules both images and practice.
In America the types of cosmetic surgery procedures chosen vary with different ethnic groups: "African -American more often opt for lip and nasal reduction operations"[6]. Then we can see that as in the model of black female face in the Barbie's web-site is shown with Caucasian facial features, small nose and thin lips, in cosmetic surgery black people choose to reshape facial features in order to accomplish the standard model of beauty. Here is not just to use hot combs to straighten the hair or bleaching skins. But is to pass through an surgical operation, to reshape your body. Though I am not going to critique the practice of cosmetic surgery, most of all, because I think that every person is free to do what s/he wants with her/his body, I think that is worth to mention how attributes of 'status, power and beauty' are associated with a standardized model, which is the white race.
I
hope that through this analysis we are able to identify how gender/power
relations works in what concerns to female black beauty. Though a nappy, natural
black hair is part of the black identity, black women have to see how the black
men usually prefer black women with straight hair, or with lighter skin. As
black women struggle to not be considered as not being beautiful by themselves
without to be pushed to use hot combs or bleaching their skins, we have seen
that we are continually being bombed with images of black women that conform the
norm, not models at all with nappy hair, or very dark skin. In fashion magazines
black women whatever product its advertised they are shown with a background of
nature, straighten hair, or animalistic connotations. Through the web-site of
Barbie we are witnesses that this stereotype of black female beauty is
perpetuated in other format, which is a female doll. This is a subject I think
that needs to be analysed carefully. The problematic of, for me a white European
woman, writing and giving an opinion about the way Western Culture stereotypes
black women is not easy. We can recognize how stereotypes work and to which
extent are creating a certain model of female beauty that is not the real one.
On the other hand I have never feel the necessity to used
hot comb to straighten my
hair ( though is a practice quite common among Spanish women in order to have a
really straighten hair), but however I wore cornrows when I was a teenager to
differentiate me from the rest , with my ethnic look. But the way I used to like
to have a ethnic look does not mean that I did it just for fun. Perhaps black
women have to straighten it in order to conform a standardise beauty model, but
perhaps some of them also think it can be another way to change their images, to
reshape themselves. I do not think this is very politically correct but I guess
this is a society, postmodern, post capitalist, and all the other post-, that
intellectuals want to add, that is mainly visual. We identity themselves wearing
a certain look, following specific aesthetics, fashions that allow us to be part
of a group. Of course I am not going to negate that we are following just the
flow of consumer capitalism, but however I think that there is more than one way
to be resistant. That this is a society where race matters, that is obviously
truth, and that old racist stereotypes created in the nineteenth century by
white European science are still maintained, that is something we can see in our
daily life. Black women I think should be able to wear the hair they prefer
whether nappy, straighten, cornrows, permanent, without to be marginalized for
not conforming a standard. On the other hand all women of all the races should
be able to look like as they want. Am I being too idealist ? We will see what
happens in a couple of decades. Is not called this millennium: the women's
millennium? I really hope so.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1. Balsamo Anne, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. 1996, Duke University Press.
2. Bordo Susan, Unbearable Weight: Feminist Western Thought and the Body. 1993
3. Davis Kathy, Embodied Practices: Feminist perspectives of the Body. 1997, sage Publications Ltd.
4. hooks bell, Black Looks, Selling Hot Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace
5. hooks bell, Outlaw Culture, Back to Black: Ending Internalised Racism.
6. Padmore Christine, Significant Flesh: Cosmetic Surgery, Physiognomy, and the Erasure of Visual Difference(s), http://www.popcultures.com/articles/body
7. Rooks, Noliwe M., Nappy by Nature. Afros Hot Combs, and Black Pride
8. Weekes Debbie, Shades of Blackness: young female constructions of beauty.
Notes
[1]
All the images I use in this description are taken from the official Barbie
doll web-site owned by Mattel, Inc, http://www.barbie.com
[2] Gold M. G, Forever Barbie.
[3] Weekes Debbie: Shades of Blackness
[5] Bordo Susan, Unbearable Weight: Material Girl, pp.263
[6] Padmore Catherine, Significant Flesh: Cosmetic Surgery, Phisiognomy, and the Erasure of Visual Difference(s), http://www.popcultures.com/articles/body
[1] pp.25
[2] Schiebiger Londa, Theories of Gender and Race, pp.64
[3] bell hooks, Selling Hot Pussy. Pp.71
[1] Source: http://www.barbie.com/mydesign
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Gender Media Watch bijgewerkt op: 11 oktober 2004 |
