8 | AUGUST 24 • 2023 

PURELY COMMENTARY

column

Is Barbie Liberal or ‘Kenservative’?
I

n the 1950s, a Jewish 
woman born in Denver, 
Colorado, to parents who 
fled persecution in Eastern 
Europe, decided that the toy 
market needed adult-themed 
dolls for children.
Ruth Handler (1916-
2002) came up 
with the idea 
for “Barbie,” 
named after 
her daughter 
Barbara and 
reportedly 
inspired by 
“Bild Lilli,” a 
German sex doll modeled 
after a comic for the 
German tabloid, Bild. A few 
years later, Handler played 
matchmaker and gave Barbie 
a boyfriend, “Ken,” named 
after her son, Kenneth. With 
her husband, Elliot, and a 
friend, Harold “Matt” Matson, 
she co-founded Mattel Inc., 
the toy empire that released 
Barbie to instant success.
The ironies in this 
story are many: A Jewess 
attuned to antisemitism 
can credit a billion-dollar 
idea to a post-war German 
doll. Having started out 
strawberry blonde, she 
evolved into the most well-
known “stereotypical” Barbie: 
that “all-American” whose 
platinum-blond hair and 
blue eyes might also classify 
her as an “Aryan” (only with 
American good cheer and 
free spirit: Heidi Klum comes 
to mind). Some analysts 
argue that Handler’s “graven 
image” was a sublimation of 
a desire to assimilate into 
America.

Or maybe it was just a 
good business decision 
that led to many more, 
like starting a line of more 
“ethnic” Barbies in the 1980s, 
to the delight of “brown 
girls” like me.
Columnists are desperate 
to read philosophical, 
political or social commen-
tary into the box-office 
smash film Barbie. You 
would think it’s the Torah 
from the sheer number of 
contradictory interpretations 
it elicits. 
Take, for example, Ben 
Shapiro’s 40-minute tirade 
(and essentially, commercial) 
against the film as “woke 
garbage.” A Twitter civil 
war then erupted when 
his Daily Wire colleague, 
Michael Knowles, tweeted: 
“It’s terrific. [Director] Greta 
Gerwig is a genius. Ben is 
completely wrong.” Knowles 
defended the movie for its 
affirmation of motherhood, 
femininity and the need for 
interconnectedness of the 
two sexes.
They all seem to underplay 
one major fact: Barbie was 
co-produced by Mattel. 
With the film, in which 
Handler (played by Rhea 
Perlman) imparts wisdom to 
a distraught “stereotypical” 
Barbie struggling with her 
mortality (played by Margot 
Robbie), Mattel simply 
continued Handler’s tradition 
of making excellent business 
decisions, which included 
hiring Israeli-American 
businessman Ynon Kreiz as 
CEO in 2018. 
As reported in several 

media interviews, he 
envisioned leveraging 
Mattel’s intellectual property 
to ensure the company’s 
liquidity and relevance. 
In the movie, he’s played 
by a goofy Will Ferrell in 
an intentional act of self-
deprecation. A pro-Israel 
Shapiro might have missed 
that Israeli angle when he 
literally burned a Barbie doll 
in his video review.
Barbie is essentially a 
glorified marketing campaign 
for a “politically incorrect” 
icon that idealizes beauty, 
the feminine form (in an 
exaggeration of proportions) 
and heterosexual 
relationships (although 
Ken, as comically played 
by a deliciously ripped 
Ryan Gosling, is hyper-
metrosexual, at best).
Some feminists might 
admire the Barbie brand for 
asserting that women can be 
anything. Other feminists 
might praise “Astronaut 
Barbie” but wail that there’s 

no “Chubby Barbie.” (“Weird 
Barbie” is hilariously 
brought to life in the film, 
but she’s the Barbie that 
naughty girls rebelliously 
burn and mangle). Non-
feminists will wonder why 
there’s no “mother Barbie,” 
and the discontinued 
pregnant “Midge” doll is no 
consolation for them.
In a very politicized world, 
Barbie the doll would have 
a severe image problem if a 
film didn’t come along and 
appear to grapple with her 
problematic identity and 
place in society. Mattel seems 
to engage in introspection 
about Handler’s creation, 
especially through the 
impassioned speech by 
the Latina matriarchal 
protagonist, Gloria (played 
by America Ferrera) who 
joins the campaign to save 
“Barbieland” from a hostile 
takeover by “Kens” pining for 
“patriarchy.”
“It is literally impossible to 
be a woman,” Gloria laments 

The pink carpet premiere of Barbie at the Pitt Street Mall in Sydney 
on June 30, 2023. 

EVA RINALDI OF ABBOTSFORD, AUSTRALIA, VIA WIKIMEDIA 
COMMONS.

Orit Arfa
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