This Barbie Does Not Want What She Hasn’t Got
RIP SINÉAD O’CONNOR
I’m trying to hold Sinéad O’Connor and Barbie in my mind simultaneously, and frankly it’s not a super comfortable feeling.
I’ve always been Team O’Connor. One of the greatest compliments I ever got was when some guy outside a Stray Cats show yelled “Hey Sinéad!” when I walked by with my shaved head. I think it was meant as more of a jeer than an accolade. It’s nice when disparaging young men accidentally make your day.
The outpouring of love and admiration for my rebel queen has been uplifting, a rare thing in the news these days. Honestly I didn’t expect that, and I wish she’d been around to see it. Not that it would have healed her pain, that was baked in and reheated again and again.
She meant a lot to me. I wanted to be as brave and as beautiful and as talented and as careless of public opinion. I’ve never reached her ranks in any of those, but she’s been a terrific aspirational model. I feel lucky to have had her in my sights when I was fighting the battle that is becoming a woman in this particular patriarchy.
While I was never as outspoken, I knew what it was to declare for feminism in a way that made other people uncomfortable. I have experienced the closing of ranks when I went… too far? Just far enough? It’s painful to state the obvious and then realize that not everyone sees the world as you do.
After reading Rememberings, O’Connor’s recent-ish memoir, I was struck by how much joy and love she brought into her life, despite her trauma and public lashings. All too often I retreat into depression and sluggishness, loath to lean into my desires and beliefs, expecting a storm. She didn’t seem to care.
Talk about a risk-taker. She’d howl and whisper and scream onstage, she’d say whatever she wanted, she’d love and bear children and make art and be her beautiful self with no filter.
Filters keep us safe. They also keep us quiet. O’Connor didn’t seem to care about being safe or being quiet. And did her harsh condemnations make the difference she hoped they would? I’d like to say yes.
We’ve spent So Much Time rehashing the Pope incident. While Americans clutched their pearls and acted as though she’d roasted and eaten a child on stage, in Ireland church abuse was a much bigger issue. She may have been ahead of her time here, but she was right on time there.
I think about songs like Black Boys on Mopeds; songs that made me think. Songs that could have been written today and would feel fresh and relevant. The great tragedy of her activism is that despite hers and thousands of other voices demanding change, it feels glacially slow.
Still, it’s always worth it to stand up and scream. I love that she later said that the SNL incident didn’t derail her career, it put her right back on the track she’d originally envisioned.
Godspeed Sinéad. You’re missed and loved and will never be forgotten.
And then… Barbie! And thanks to Greta Gerwig, possibly the only one who could make me see this other icon through anything but disgust-colored glasses.
I didn’t have Barbies when I was a kid; in fact I only ever had one doll, and beyond carrying her around and putting her to bed I wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. My sister had a Skipper, but if there were any other teen/adult dolls in the house I don’t remember them.
I wasn’t really thinking about adulthood, I guess. My imagination stuck strictly to the possibilities for children ruling the world. And animals, I was willing to give them some room at the countertop.
So maybe I missed out a little. Lately I’m hearing women reminisce rhapsodically about their Barbies, and how those dolls opened their minds to their possible futures, or some such. No shade, it just wasn’t anywhere near my own experience. Perhaps my adulthood would have been a little less haphazard if I’d given any thought to actual professions and lifestyles. But no.
My kids didn’t have Barbies, either. Again, they just weren’t interested. And as a feminist child of the ‘70’s, I wasn’t keen to give them a weirdly-shaped perpetually smiling icon of 50’s era femininity. And then my kids were no longer young children and Barbie left my consciousness entirely.
I loved the movie. The way it laid bare the oppression we all experience when power is so unbalanced and we’re trying to conform to standards we don’t even understand. And let’s be honest, the one-liners! The costumes! The references! The triple entendres!
Truly an artistic masterpiece, and yes, I hear myself saying that about a hot pink fantasia. There’s a bit of tug-of-war between the tenets of second and third wave feminism in the movie; gender lines are clear, grrl power is turned up to 11, patriarchy is on the chopping block, and a perfect day includes several costume changes.
Choose your feminist trope and throw in the blender with pineapple juice and a scoop of collagen! There’s plenty for all.
While I don’t expect a movie designed to sell more dolls to upend an entrenched social dynamic, I’m pleased as punch that it’s making a run at it. You know it’s having some effect when neo-cons are wetting their pants over it.
Can a doll designed to look like a male fantasy really be used as a feminist icon? I mean, why the hell not? If we have learned anything from decades of modern protest, it’s that it’s most effective when it comes from every direction, with the most diverse cast of characters possible.
Barbie could not be more different from my Irish idol, and to me that’s the beauty of the two briefly sharing the headlines. It’s hard to be Good in the world. It’s hard to be the Right Kind of Feminist, or the Right Kind of Woman. It’s hard to live Sustainably, with Integrity, and make Unilaterally Good choices.
This old patriarchy is battered and scarred. It’s not gone yet, to be sure. If we can attack it from every possible angle, simultaneously, we might just topple it. Yell and scream about it, be sly as you undermine it, wink as you take it down a peg. We’re tired, but we haven’t given up yet. If a billion-dollar-making film can move the needle a tiny bit I’m here for it.
We’re living in a moment in which we get to love and adore both Sinéad O’Connor and Barbie, and thank them for being feminists and fighters. Who’d have thunk it?