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6c8d66a
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Barbie taught us a lot--sometimes more than we wanted to know. Her posture showed us that being sexual meant being immobile. It meant: walk on your toes, bust out, limbs rigid. Barbie would flash the white of her teeth, cock her head, swivel on her torso, half raise her smooth arm, but she could say nothing. For Barbie had no conceivable character or inner life. Barbie's breasts and clothes seemed to blunt her personality. In Barbie's life, events were merely excuses for ensembles. Her story could really go nowhere. Which meant, perhaps, that once we got over the excitement of getting provocatively dressed and then undressed, our story would go nowhere. We were fixated on Barbie, but we also despised her. The secret game in countless American basements and playrooms involved (and still does, I am told) little girls doing bad things to Barbie. Sometimes we would make her take positions that were ludicrous or that looked painful. Other times, we would pop her head off the rounded stump of her neck. While this was a nice, French Revolution sort of vengeance, it also scared us. It was scary because even when you held her body in one hand and her head in the other, nothing seemed much changed. After all, she had been made up of parts to start with. Even when fully assembled, she wasn't whole. Her hands didn't grasp, her feet didn't walk, her face had no expression.
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promiscuities
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Naomi Wolf |