Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Barbie: Feminist Icon?

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Barbie is many things: an astronaut, a robotics engineers, a judge, and now a movie star! But can she be considered a feminist icon? For a toy with such incredible appeal around the world, especially to young children, it’s an important question to ask. Today we’re joined by Lenore Wright, author of Athena to Barbie: Bodies, Archetypes, and Women’s Search For Self, to find out what this global icon really represents. This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here. It would mean the world to us!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. My lovely bit Twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here once again at the top of the show to make sure that you are going to be all right with what is going to be poured into your lughole. This is your fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults

about a range of adulty subjects in an adulty way and you should be an adult too. Right. We are talking about. about Barbie today. Actually, just after the warning that you need to be an adult, we're talking about a children's toy. But Barbie is a fairly grown-up children's toy, I would have said. So we're going to be zooming into some adulty conversation, and this is your warning to just get out now, where you still can, if you can't handle the heat of the in crowd. For those of you that are still

with me, let's do this. Say what you want about it, but Barbie has a hell of an intimidating. CV. By recent count, she's had over 200 different jobs in a career spanning 60 years. That is impressive. From her first job as a fashion designer in 1960 to her most recent job as a robotics engineer. Seriously, is there anything that woman can't do? Well, she hasn't been a sex historian yet, but you know, maybe that is a future Barbie for a future time. But when you look at you look at, you know, when you look deeply into those unblinking pristine eyes. Perhaps there's something more problematic lurking there. Is Barbie a feminist role model for our time?

Or are the very things that define this historical high achiever, her image, her lifestyle, her tits? Are they more problematic and damaging than feminist? What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning enough and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. Barbie has always been a woman who wears many halves, figuratively and literally. Take 1965, for example, that was a year when she became an astronaut. Four years before a man actually stepped on the moon, might I add, but that year she also had a slumber party edition with accessories that included a set of scales

and a book called How to Lose Weight. That's less impressive. With over a billion Barbie dolls sold to date, have her depictions of femininity in womanhood to such a huge and impressionable audience been positive or damaging? Today's guest, Lenore Wright, author of Athena to Barbie, Bodies, Arctytypes and Woman's Search for Self, is here to discuss just that.

But before we get into the episodes, I am here once more to ask you a little favour. If you are enjoying the Twix, could you possibly maybe give us a vote at the Listeners Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards? Please, please, please, it'll make us so happy. If you follow the link in the show notes, it'll take just a second. We were shortlisted last year.

We just missed out. And I think with your help, we can get it this year. Right, Betwixters, back to the show. Let's do this. Hello, and welcome to Betwix the sheets. It's only Lenore Wright. How are you doing? You are looking fabulous today.

Well, thank you. I have on my pink, an honor of Barbie. You know, I'm barbicored really hard today. The movie's coming out. So I'm excited. I just wanted to say I noticed it. I just wanted to just pick up on that. No one can see you, but I can, and I appreciate the pink.

Thank you, thank you. And how are you? Oh, man, I am thrilled to be talking to you because Barbie is having a moment. Is she not? She is indeed. It's time. How long have you studied Barbie for, I know she's not like your solo area of research, but it's more like representations of women, but Barbie is definitely in there.

How long have you been studying Barbie? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I guess my first article came out 20 years ago. Yeah, The Wonder of Barbie. And I have to say it's my most popular piece ever. So that's telling it of itself. But also in the scholarly world, it was rather ridiculed for many, many years. So it got a lot of pushback.

And, you know, this is pre-social media days. but there were some forums where people would have sound off about various things. And so there was a lot of kind of like, oh, this is trivial, this isn't rigorous, this isn't serious. So now I feel a little bit vindicated that here we are. Where are they now? Absolutely. But I mean, I've heard lots of historians and researchers who are researching something, I guess you can say it's in popular culture.

And that is something that they've encountered a lot is the idea that that what they are studying isn't worthy of academic study because it's fun somehow. Exactly. I think that there's an association with entertainment. And so surely that, you know, is it serious work? And in fact, maybe there's an aversion to entertainment. We should be suspicious of anyone enjoying themselves while they're doing kind of the research they do. So yeah, you're right. It's not just with things like dolls or Barbie or et cetera, fill in the blank. But it's certainly it's just in there within the scholarly community of unless you're reading specific texts that are part of the canon or you know looking at material culture that's been approved by

the academy etc then yeah you're on the outs what was it that made you want to research barbie did did barbies growing up were you a barbie girl i did i did have barbies growing up so yes in fact probably my parents still have them they so they say that i should ask They save everything. So I did have Barbies growing up. And for me, the experience I had with Barbie is similar to what I've read about among other scholars. And even children that they've observed or seen in play with Barbie is just the creation of your own storyline, the play with identity. It wasn't the script.

It wasn't the prescribed. These are the narratives that Barbie must follow. And, you know, you just play along and mindlessly. was much more creative and playful. So that for me, that was one of those early moments of interest in identity formation and exploration. And I can remember that of that moment of like, oh, I could name Barbie anything, including give Barbie my own name. Or just sort of, you know, think through like, what does that like and what would that signify? Things like that.

So I did. I loved Barbie, played with Barbie with lots of relatives and cousins and friends and so on. And then for me, like, oh, you know, going through graduate school and philosophy, always very interested in aesthetics, interested in aesthetic experience, interested in feminism from an early age, interested in women's studies, all those things that have kind of converged. And I thought, well, wow, what could I do with Barbie if I'm interested in female representation, concerns about the way women are presented in advertising, et cetera. Oh, well, here's something I could look at in pop culture,

and that's the treatment of Barbie. So that, yeah, so it kind of pulls together my academic interest with just my own experience growing up. I love that. I would love to have been in the room when they were designing the bodies of Ken and Barbie, because I remember doing that as a small child. I'm sure you did, but you take all of the clothes off and you kind of look at it for a while, because although it's not very detailed, obviously, that's probably like one of the first accesses I had to like a naked adult form or an image thereof.

It'd be interesting to know what was the conversations that went into that. Yeah. Ken was remade at one point. He had a very slim physique early on. And then at some point they decided, oh, no, Ken needed to be beefed up. And then the original clothes didn't fit the new Ken model. So then you have to design like this whole new wardrobe for a kin and so on. But yeah, it would be interesting to ask, yeah, who was Ken modeled after? Yeah, right?

And like how much detail did they want to put on him? And Barbie is, she is a global force to be reckoned with, isn't she? I think that sometimes we can forget that because like when you're playing with Barbie on your own in your room as a child, You sort of aren't really aware of just how big and iconic this doll actually is. 100%. Yeah. And I think Ruth Handler and Elliott Handler, who co-founded Mattel, I think they, it was very timely that Barmy came out when she did in 1959 because television was taking off.

And so they immediately said, oh, gosh, if we can advertise this, if we can promote this, if we can market it. I mean, so they, you know, pushed through the market forces. and exploited them to their advantage. But you're right, I think when you're just on your own playing, really with any toy, just as a child, you're not thinking about, you know, what is this thing that I'm using as a prop

in my own games of make-believe? And what does it represent? And, you know, what's its force in the world? Yeah, none of those things really come into mind, I think. But she's huge, yeah. She's available in every country in the world pretty much, isn't she? Yeah. Is that right?

Yeah. There have been some cultures, more conservative cultures, Islamic cultures, et cetera, some kind of religious communities that are suspicious of Barley. And I would say that's true for some Christian communities as well and other faith traditions, but communities that have a more circumscribed view of what it means to be a woman and operate in the world as a woman. I've got a modesty, culture even. And so, yeah, there's some push back against Barbie in various pockets of the world

but yeah, nonetheless, she's everywhere. Pretty much, pretty much global penetration, right? Do we know how many jobs she's had? Like how many different careers Barbie has had? She's had more than 200. Wow. That was intentional on the handler's part. If we want to show whomever's playing with her,

mostly young girls, but whomever picks her up to play with her, that the sky's the limit for her, that she has real, through the action of the child rural agency, and she can choose to dress up and go out there and live her life. And she's not necessarily a homemaker or a domestic figure or other things. But yeah, she definitely has lots of occupational options and the wardrobe to go with them. And the wardrobe, of course she does.

The one occupation that you've never really seen Barbie embracing is probably sex worker Barbie. But my favorite thing about Barbie as an adult is her, origin story, which is kind of, it's not a million miles away from that. No, no, you're right. And I know you know this story. You've written about it yourself. But yeah, her origins, her, I call them her Germanic origins. Oh, I love that.

That makes us a Germanic origin, Bobby. That's it. She started really, I guess, as a comic strict figure. I mean, that was the original impetus for creating Bill Lilly, the novelty doll in Germany in 1955, but 1953, the tabloid build, which is a Hamburg-based, as you know, a Hamburg-based newspaper, produces comic strip. And yeah, the character there is sometimes portrayed as a gold digger, sometimes an escort, right, sometimes both. But very quick-witted. Yes. And Brayson, in my mind, she's like a 1950s sex positive. Yes.

feminist. Something like that. But yeah, very bold and brazen and just issue who she is. But of course, she was not for children. She wasn't designed for children. No. Sold in, you know, bars and Tabasco kiosks and, you know, adult exclusive spaces and given to other adults as gag gifts. And so, you know, there's, again, she sort of dismissed as this is hilarious and we should make fun of. And so no, no sex worker Barbie, but you're right. I mean, she more or less started as a sex doll. She did.

How did she end up from sex worker Barbie's brilliant. How did sex worker Barbie, how did sex worker Lily, a name was? How did she end up as the Barbie that we know and love? I'm going to assume that the first Barbie doll had moved away from the original Lily. That's right. So the handlers, but Ruth in particular, were traveling through Europe. And she had already pitched this idea of a more grown-up adult doll because she watched her daughter, Barbara, by the way, no surprise there, Barbara. Yeah.

Look at that. Who was preteen, you know, 13 or so. And Barbara had given up her baby dolls and paper dolls. You know, you have the limitations of the two-dimensional functionality. So she's noticing her own daughter desiring to explore identity. but really not having the tools to do it. And so she thought of this idea of a more three-dimensional doll, but apparently there was, even her husband thought,

no, it's not a great idea, who would want that? Like, who wants to play with an adult doll? That doesn't make sense. But as they travel through Europe. Yeah, right. They encountered the Bill Lilly. And so she really did use that as a template, as a model, a prototype for what became Barbie.

And even though there was still some resistance by the Mattel Company to adopting Barbie and creating Barbie, they persevered and they did it. But certainly, I mean, she gets a modesty makeover in America, I think. She also physically looked very similar to build Lily, but certainly was marketed for children. And so, yeah, you have to kind of clean up her act, I guess, as it were. And even some parents early on, some parents were anxious about. some of the wardrobe that Barbary came with. So the negligee, then not yes. And so they would add accessories to, I think in their mind,

to mitigate some of the parents' concerns. But then it, of course, raises different concerns for feminists in particular. Like, wait a minute. You know, this seems to suggest that, you know, while it is just meant to stay home and live in the domestic sphere and that sort of thing. I don't think I've ever seen a first edition Barbie. I've never even looked one up in line. What did she look like?

They came out with different haircuts, but originally, when she had that ponytail, like Bill Lilly, was similar in proportion. So the exaggerated proportions were still there. But she also had occasionally some bubble cuts. So there was a little bit of a variety.

You could pick what you wanted your Barbie to look like a little bit within a range, limited range. And then, yeah, she came with certain standard outfits that would allow, her to pursue the occupations that she was choosing or to be dressed appropriately for the occasions, social events, etc. that she would be attending. But again, some of those raise some

of those raise some questions for people. But yeah, there are great photos. My partner Henry showed me the first commercial that features Barbie. And it's, of course, black and white. And it's the, you know, there's a little nice jingle with it and the story of Barbie. But it basically communicates that this is a toy designed for children's make-believe, and the children themselves imagine her as real, and they imagine themselves also kind of pursuing a life that Barbie might pursue. So it's very interesting to look at some of that early work in advertising. So was the career Barbie Barbie in all these different roles and jobs, was that with her right at the beginning? Was that something that evolved later on? Or was she always about airline Barbie

and Malibu Barbie and all the other Barbies. No, there's some contention in scholarship about that, some disagreement. But no, early on, I think like Ruth Handler herself, she was out there outside of the domestic sphere, pursuing her own work and interest. And then later in the 60s, early 70s, there was a regressive time in which suddenly all there were introduced more domesticated, sort of the domestic period of Barbie,

domestic sorts of. work like an iron was introduced and a cookbook and pots and pans and utah like no that was not there in 1959 but came later in some ways tracking political shifts in the united states right and more kind of turns toward conservatism but i think tracking other things too but it's interesting that no early on she was she was a career while she was unmarried she was a professional she was economically independent. For me, she's very progressive for in 1959 America. That is really when you say it like that, for a, you know, a woman figure, even a doll to be unmarried, doesn't have kids and is off doing a career with spectacular breasts.

That's quite progressive. 39 inches, apparently, if she were a woman. Barbie, wow. Yeah, lots of scholarly commentary about her measurements, of course. And feminists who want to raise that as concerned for little girls who are playing with her and body image dysmorphia and these sorts of things. But yeah, nonetheless, yeah, she is definitely an adult doll. She's an adult dolly, isn't she?

What was, was it Ruth Handler who created Fabi? Did she have a vision for this doll? Did she want her to be, like, not just sell loads and get rich, but did she have a vision like this is going to empower young girls? Or was that something that came later, with Barbie. Yeah, I do think that was part of Rousse Vision. She herself in various interviews has said things like, oh, I hate roughhouse work.

I'm like, I would, you know, I would die if that sort of thing, I'm exaggerating. But if I had to do the drudgery of that rough house work, I would die. But she herself resisted, you know, staying at home. And even apparently a company said, oh, we can make a Barbie-sized vacuum cleaner. And she said no. So even though the iron came, the vacuum cleaner. did not for a long time anyway. And so Ruth herself, yeah, I think had that vision of as preteen girls especially begin to think about their futures. And in 1960, by the way, apparently about

37% of women over the age of 16 were in the workforce, had a job in the United States. So she's sort of tracking like, oh, yeah, more more women are going to be out there. Let's prompt them in their games of make-believe to imagine a life for themselves that may look really different than their grandmother's lives. So I do think she had, you know, at least maybe a tacit feminist commitment to women's equality, women's empowerment, women's agency. I'll be back with Lenore and Barbie after the short break. I'm James Patton Rogers, a war historian, advisor to the UN and NATO, and host of the warfare podcast from History Hit. twice a week every week as we look at the conflicts that have defined our past and the one shaping our future.

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Auschwitz combined the functions of death camp and concentration camp and slave labor. Join us on the Warfare podcast from History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. I don't think I've ever seen Mother Barbie. Does she ever had kids? Has there ever been a maternal Barbie, Barbie on the maternity ward? She does not. She doesn't because she and Ken never marry. So that's the thing, even after, yeah. So, you know, again, the modesty makeover, she and Ken, Ken comes along. He's her steady boyfriend for decades. They have this little breakup, but then they reunite, et cetera. So because they never marry, you know, it's again sort of navigating. Of course. American culture and just global culture, you know, that would have been too far for parents for her to have a

baby. And so she has her friend Midge. Midge is married and she has a three-year-old and then you can even, I have one, you can purchase pregnant Midge. She's got the baby bump. And then you just take it off. Yeah, you just take it off, set it aside. And then of course, her abs are flat as, you know, and I already bored. And then you put it back off. Yeah. And so it was obviously, I mean, at some point, maybe girls were interested. So maybe it's not just conservative trends and politics, but girls themselves may have said, you know, I really would like to think about marriage and motherhood, even if I work outside of the home. And it would be nice to have a Barbie figure to explore that through. So that was Midge. Yeah. I ended up on Barbie conspiracy theory TikTok last night because I knew

that I was going to come and talk to you. It's a very weird side of TikTok to be on. But I saw somebody, making the case that Barbie and Ken were originally supposed to be brother and sister. Is this nonsense? Just because was it Ruth, her son was called Ken or Kenneth? So she's actually named them after her son and daughter? Or is that not, is that TikTok nonsense? I've never heard that. So I need to do this deep dive into the TikTok conspiracy, Barbie conspiracy theories,

which I think my older son could help me with. He's into the dark web and all that stuff. No, the stuff you'll see. and Barbie and Ken on the dark web is, no, that would be awful. Don't watch stuff. But I thought, that's interesting. Maybe they, no, they're definitely boyfriend and girlfriend, aren't they? They were always supposed to be.

And I think even early on, one of Barbie's original outfit was her college sweater. Right. Which, you know, created some difficulty because then, you know, sweaters are tight and you can see her adultness in all of its glory. And so there were concerns about that. But I think there she needed an escort, you know, just as young women in 1959 who went to college, you would need a male escort to go to dances, to go to things, etc.

And so he was designed to be her steady escort. I love that. When did Barbie become controversial? Because she is, she's a figure that will polarize a debate. I mean, if you've got a room full of feminists and you'll love a Barbie in there, there's going to be a bitch fight. But like, are she always been quite conscious? special. Yeah. So interviews with parents early on, even in the prototype phase, there were concerns,

again, about the negligee or about the tight sweater or things like that, just how she appeared, concerns about the lack of domestic accessories that, again, some parents want their children, especially if they see, make-believe as formation for the future. And it's a way of engaging in, future social roles in a safe, non-threatening way, then they wanted them to be exposed to what they thought their daughters or sons might do in the world, including getting married and having children. So there are interviews with parents pushing back from really the beginning. Of course, the feminists later, especially second ways feminist become very concerned

about just her physical representation and the sexualization, objective. of women's bodies. What she represent, again, is this just a frivolous sort of sex doll that, you know, isn't serious? And even though she has these occupations, we don't really believe that she's helping empower girls and women for the future. So certainly Betty Friedan, you know, no, no, no Barbies, that you can't be a feminist and play with Barbie or even take seriously something like a Barbie doll or any kind of doll maybe.

So, yeah, that came along right. And you're right, it's incredibly polarizing. I think that shifted over the past 10 years or so as feminists also have become concerned with an erasure of what sometimes called girl culture or just maybe an erasure of girls, period. That's interesting. Yeah. And so there they've said, well, wait a minute. Maybe that's going too far to simply reject the things that girls have grown up engaging with and being interested. in for the sake of some other important goal.

But nonetheless, let's not just treat children as if they're silly and they don't know what they're doing and their play shouldn't be taken seriously. The hub is a pretty heavy accusations levied at Barbie. And that would be okay because we've had Professor Barbie and Lawyer Barbie so she could totally handle herself. But like the accusation is that her body is utterly unrealistic and that is true. It is. It is Tilly, Tilly, Tilly, or way.

huge boobs and hips and the gorgeous hair and that the aesthetic of her presents a very unrealistic standard and that it's encouraging little girls to just be valued by their beauty. And what's your take on that? I mean, it's a tricky one, isn't it, that one? It is a tricky one. And I do think we should be concerned about the ways in which, especially young girls, I mean, there have been some developmental psychologists correlate exposure to Barbie. in populations of ages 3 to 8 with lower self-esteem, body dysphoria, eating disorders.

Yeah. And so that's, that's of course, very alarming. I think, though, there's also a lot of research to suggest that kids are really savvy. And kids do have some sense of, this is unrealistic. I know I'm not going to grow up and look like this. Or that's not even why I'm interested in playing with this doll. really do see it as, again, a prop or a proxy that just allows me to play out some imaginative possibilities that I couldn't play out otherwise. So I don't know if that salvages the concerns

or at least mitigates them at all. So I take the concern seriously, but I do want to believe, at least, or hope, and there's support for it, but hope that the toy status itself allows a separation from reality and helps children realize, oh, yeah, life, reality, you know, at play, aren't always identical. And I can tease those out. Yeah, they're entangled, but I can tease them apart sometimes. And just bracket or suspend the kind of belief, as it were. Do you think it might be as well because since the 1950s, the toy industry has grown enormously. Now there are so many alternatives to a Barbie doll. I mean, we do have more realistic dolls. There have been more bodgy, positive dolls. There have been also ones that are completely not, but like Brat's dolls and all, you know,

see, there's a huge range. So maybe like Barbie is less concerning because if you want a realistic girl doll, you can go and get one and that there are alternatives to it. That's a great point. Yeah, that's a great point. There is, yes, a much wider range and more diversity. Although Barbie does seem to kick their asses, like she's still the number one she's still the number one selling dollars. She's still, she's it. She's still the thing. She's cornered the market it seems. But nonetheless, yeah, I do think the play with Barbie and I think the way in which she's even been appropriated by adults in kind of pursuing gender identity or exploring self-representation or even just presentation, I think all of that has been a positive ship, has enabled some exposure

of oppressive structures and gender construction and not totally the artificiality of it, but at least a playfulness with, we can prison ourselves in a variety of ways and we aren't bound to some fixed set of gender norms anymore. What I liked about your research, I thought it was that you talk about her, not just Barbie's figure,

but what is projected onto her. And one of the interesting things I thought about it, and you've kind of covered it a little bit with what we're talking about with Ken, because, you know, they never consummated their relationship that we know of, unless it's on the dark web. But you talk about her being, like, representative of the Virgin Mary, and I never thought of Barbie as a virgin before.

How did you get there? It called her unwound as well at one point, which I was like, that's... Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So I look at four female ectops, and of course, they're not exonautics. They're all fraught, et cetera.

But it's as women in particular have navigated gender roles and gender identity, we're always encountering different archetypal figures that shape how we see ourselves, what we're posited to be. So both essence and identity is there. And so, yeah, I start in the book, I start with Mary, so it's anachronistic, but I start with Mary, who represents in a womb. It's kind of framed around the womb to be. body as sacred space. But, you know, Mary's virginal. And then I moved to Athena and womb as political

space because she's celibate and she's not born from a womb, but she gives birth to the state. That I go to Venus and who's trying to, I think, in some ways, reconcile the feminine and masculine orders and play kind of a civic as well as an erotic role in human relationships. And then I get to Barbie. It really seems to be that one way, at least scholars may want to read Barbie or philosophers read Barbie, is that she picks up, she exemplifies the virginity of Mary, because again, she's not married. She doesn't have children. She's got midge over there.

She's doing her career. So she's got Athena's power. And she's got Venus's beauty. So she in some ways, I think, pulls together those elements of female representation in one package as it were, but I think it's designed to minimize any threat to the male order and male power. And so that's why she has to smile. She has to have, you know, that appealing face. She has to, you know, just be non-threatening in all of those ways because then she can, she can do all those things that really otherwise would be threatening, like have these occupations

and refuse to have children that, you know, otherwise culture is going to say, no, wait a bit at it. I don't know that I want this to be the role model for my daughter. Yeah, I do think we can project onto her the possibility of pregnancy because she codes in a feminine way. And so her femininity enables viewers to project that onto her so that even if, right, you look at her and the genitals aren't there, the, you know, women's not there. She can't actually bear children. Nonetheless, we could imagine as a possibility that she could. I think I used to make my Barbie's pregnant when I was little. I used to get like smaller dolls and shove them up a dress

and pretend that she was going to have a baby. Yeah, surely. I mean, just as little girls sometimes will stick pillows up their shirts and like imagine themselves, like walking around, you know. I imagine, yeah, we did all of that right with our dolls. One of the things that I like to you writing about as well is about how Barbie is simultaneously coded as ultra-feminine, indeniably. But she also occupies.

particularly masculine spaces and places, especially when she was first launched. I mean, the fact that she has a career and she doesn't have a job and she's going around the world, those were typically masculine roles. Absolutely. So again, I think what's very clever, what's happening there is on Mattel's part, is that if they can picture in such a way that you would elevate that feminine presence and put that in front of you with, oh my gosh, everything's pink, you know, the pink house, the pink clothes, the pink car, the pink, you know, pink, pink, pink, pink, it's everything is ultra feminine. And again, smiling and pleasant and all of these things, then you can get by with allowing her to do things that are more subversive. So that's

part of the fascinating contradiction and amalgam of her incongruity is that she's really doing some pretty, subversive things, but she's doing it in a way that's like, everybody, relaxed, nobody's on guard. She's just getting by with kind of passing as just a traditional woman. I love that. Has Barbie ever undergone a body

makeover? Has there ever been any like actually maybe we should make the boobs a bit smaller here, lads? Like any kind of remodeling or she pretty much the same shape she's always been. Yeah, there have been some introductions of more diverse body types. And so

the curvy Barbie, this Barbie So there are changes. There have been promoted changes in Barbie's figure. They weren't well received, interestingly. So that's, again, I think she is a kind of iconic figure. And we don't like to mess with icons. Like, don't change that one. You know, that's, we so strongly associate who that icon is with how they look.

That is really hard for, I think, even, you know, living icons to change themselves very much. it wasn't well received. I think there's some who said we need to do more of that. I mean, Mattel has not gone far enough in fixing some issues with diversity, both in race and body type, other things. But I think, again, because of that status as a kind of icon, it's people are fairly reluctant. What I liked by your book is that you were going back through time and looking at various historical figures and icons. And I was thinking the whole way through it, like, what would have Medi-Ey even? Barbie be like because like Barbie was was made of like you know like the beautiful body type of the time in the 50s but obviously the body beautiful in the medieval period the Renaissance period

very different from what it was today I wonder what she'd look like yeah it's a great question oh yeah and then think about the costuming and the clothing too that would be fabulous I would buy that Barbie what would she look like she'd have to be a bit chubbier they liked larger bodies then, didn't they? And very pale. That was the thing. Yes. That kind of obsession with blondeness goes pretty far back. Yes. So she may still be blonde, but kind of what does that symbolize? The light and enlightenment and all those things. But who knows? What do you think is the future

for Barbie? Where do you think we're going with Barbie? I haven't seen the movie yet. The time of recording it, I don't think it's out yet. Have you seen it? No, I've seen it Friday. It's a sold-out show for it like the whole weekend. So I'm very excited that I get to see it. I think the future is kind of the postmodern, prerotic exploration of gender performativity, gender identity, playfulness, which is nice. There's a playfulness about identity construction.

There's a questioning of essentialist perspectives, and that's been happening for a long time. But I think finally maybe kind of the broader culture is thinking that through of, well, maybe there isn't a, quote, human essence. Maybe there are essences or maybe not even that. So debates about that. But I do think she will continue to serve that iconic role that she has and have that status and culture.

But open up really interesting conversations among those who have always felt excluded from traditional society or culture, gender norms. And, yeah, the appropriation of her among the drag community. etc. I think is really interesting. So I think we'll see more of that. Okay, final question. This is slightly off topic. What is the American deal with sweaters? I've heard in movies and TV shows when they're like, oh my God, she's a girl who can wear a sweater. And like, you just said there that Barbie was, it was the sweaters that were controversial. Like through a UK brain, a sweater is a jumper. They're not sexy. Right. What is that? What's an American sweater and why?

Yeah. I think we can blame Lana Turner, but the American actress who first wore that and the, you know, was tied and she also was well-endowed. And so, yeah, it was, that was scandalous to see her figure so clearly. So I think it's that. It's like, oh, my gosh, I can see your proportions in a sweater. So we're talking like a tight sweater. That's what we're talking.

Not like a big lumpy jumper, which is like a carton. Right. Not a loose jumper. But, yeah. I really like tightly knitted to your body. I've always wondered. But what's so funny to me about that is yet she comes out in a bathing suit. Like that's sexier, isn't it?

Right. Yeah. So that's interesting to me that the bathing suit's okay. But again, maybe because it's knit for sweating. But the sweater, that's a problem. I think it's a uniquely American thing that the eroticization of the sweater, because I've never fully comprehended that. Thank you for answering my question.

You have been amazing to talk to. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Gosh, they can find me on the web. My book came out with Fortress Press. So Fortress Press, Athena to Barbie, if you're interested in the book itself, I have a website so they can find me through my website,

Lenore Wright. They could find me at the Baylor University webpage. So I'm a faculty member at Baylor in Waco, Texas. So a lot of ways. I'm findable. Thank you so much for talking to me. You have been so much fun. Thank you, thank you very much, and enjoy the movie. Oh, I will, you too. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Lenore for joining me.

And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want us to explore a subject or if you just want to say hello, you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got episodes on everything from the... a history of kissing to Eleanor of Aquitaine all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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