Barbie playsets 201912/4/2023 ![]() We just learned when we were young that if someone compliments our cooking, we always go, “Oh, I think there’s a little too much salt in it.” If someone compliments our appearance, we go, “Oh, this is just something I had in the closet for years.” Likewise, we’re always competing to sit in the back seat or do the dishes, because that’s how we learned to be as girls. I grew up in the Midwest, and most of my friends are women who grew up in the Midwest. And then they are figuratively put in a box. In Reviving, I talk about girls being so full of energy and intelligence and creativity and zest and opinions until they’re adolescents. No pun intended, but can you unpack that? You mentioned the idea of being put in a box as a metaphor in Barbie. I really saw it as a way to discard the false social media self and become a true person. There’s all the artificial ways you can doctor your image to make sure you look like a Barbie. Girls go from building their own sense of who they are to being in a “most likes” contest on social media. It really has to do with going from being shallow to having a deep structure and some inner architecture.īut what I actually focused on when I saw it was the work I’ve done on social media and how social media cultivates the false self. the fear of not being perfect-and the whole business of false self versus true self and a search for authenticity that is rather an effort to please other people. That’s absolutely something that’s in Reviving. For example, Ken waiting for the female gaze to feel alive. The movie follows very closely to the script of that book. In what ways did you find that the movie connects to your book? “And kind of surprising, now that I’m involved in a conversation about a Barbie movie after all these years.” ![]() Pipher is glad to see an uptick in conversations surrounding her book today. Pipher shares anecdotes about young girls from her time as a clinical psychologist, during which she found girls came to her with problems regarding sex, body acceptance, grades, divorce, and more. The book, which was re-released by Pipher and her daughter Sara Gilliam in 2019, details the struggles young girls face as they move out of childhood and into adulthood-particularly as a result of the way the media portrays women as they “ought” to be. “How is journey the same thing that a teenage girl feels? All of a sudden, she thinks, Oh, I’m not good enough.” “They’re funny and brash and confident, and then they just-stop,” Gerwig said. In an interview with Vogue before the movie premiered, Gerwig revealed that Barbie’s character arc in the film was mostly based on Pipher’s exploration of young girls growing up. And I was touched by how interested was in pursuing themes that are themes I pursued when I wrote Reviving Ophelia.” “ is not the kind of movie I would usually go to, but I was glad I went,” Pipher tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed on a phone call after having seen the blockbuster hit. ![]() Barbie, as portrayed by Margot Robbie, goes through the same struggles as the young girls Pipher writes about in her book. “Girls who do this are the ‘Muffys’ and ‘Barbie dolls’ with hair and smiles in place and a terrible deadness underneath.”īut through the eyes of Gerwig, Pipher tells me, Barbie becomes a “feminist icon.” No longer are Barbie dolls the antithesis of accepting one’s physical and emotional self. “To totally accept the cultural definitions of femininity and conform to the pressures is to kill the self,” Pipher writes in her book. Girls shouldn’t need to have a figure like Barbie, she said, nor a perfectly symmetrical face or smooth blonde hair to be beautiful. Mary Pipher used to denounce Barbie dolls.īarbies were exactly what Pipher-whose 1994 non-fiction book Reviving Ophelia inspired the plot of Barbie, according to director Greta Gerwig-strived to warn girls about in her writing. ![]()
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