!

I’ve been following along with interest my dear onebrownwoman’s posts on Diwali Barbie, Oriental Barbie, and Disidentification Barbie. I don’t have a lot to add on the fem theory side, but a little on the reality aspect.

As a psych student, I think I’ve come across the Clark & Clark doll preference experiment 150 times. Kenneth and Mamie Clark - Black children asked to choose “nice” and “bad” dolls between Black and White dolls – they choose White and Black, respesctively – alarm, outrage, action – one of the big catalysts for Brown v. Board. I’ve thought long and hard about this experiment. It’s not that I didn’t believe it, not that I don’t embrace where it took America, it’s just that I didn’t trust it. Maybe somewhere along the way I started thinking, “What’s the big deal?”

So today my 12-year old cousin came over. Two things happened, and I’ll tell you the second first.
–

“Do you want to see what I want for Christmas? I probably won’t get it because it’s $87.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, come over here to this computer.”

Apparently a website she’s studied many times, she has the American Girl ‘Just Like You’ page open. My heart did a little jump for joy when I realized it wasn’t Molly, Samantha, or Kirsten that she wanted, but a doll ‘just like her’. I noted and tried to discard the site organization: white blond girls first, white girls with darker hair next, less fair (note I did not say brown) girls with blond hair, blah, blah, blah. There are two dolls that could be fairly characterized as Black, and a few that could fall into brown.

“This is my favorite.”

A little white girl with medium brown hair.

And that experiment made sense to me. Some of it was not the practicality of media representation, or the operationalization of self-esteem, or the interpretation of doll preference. Some of it was the kick in the gut that comes from realizing your babies don’t prefer dolls that look like them, which means they don’t prefer dolls that look like you.

“Isn’t there one with darker skin you like?”

“Yeah I kind of like this one.”

A barely-brown girl with light brown hair.

I scrolled down.

“How about one of these?”

“Ew, those are ugly.”

I almost cried.

“How about this one? She has brown skin and straight black hair.”

“I guess she’s okay, but I like this one better.”

In fact, the whitest, blondest child on the page.
–

I woke up late and was disheveled trying to turn in a piece of homework online while doing my daily blogcheck when my cousin walked in.

“Oh my gawwwd. You’re still into those? How ooooold are you?!”

She caught me on Woman of (an)other color reading Disidentification Barbie. And suddenly I remembered how much I loved Barbie. I had one Barbie and never wanted more. They were spindly and unposable and big grown women, during a childhood where I wanted baby dolls. But the aesthetic of Barbie captured my heart. I had a Barbie-a-Day calendar for the entire year of 2001. I had Barbie folders, and carried them to high school in that look-at-me-I’m-so-ironic-and-cool I’m-carrying-Barbie-folders-to-high-school way. The idea of Barbie, the idea that people could be obsessed with Barbie, obsessed me.

I didn’t know how to explain how very much over it I was, so I let it go. But I did wonder what I would look back at six years from now, what I would wrinkle my forehead over, and develop hypotheses about, when I studied the mysterious species of girl-child I used to be.
–

It blows my mind how much it can all matter when you take it into the real world.