Thinking with Barbie: Yay, [Paradoxical] Space.

Claire Birkenshaw

Barbie: “I feel kind of ill-at-ease, I don’t even know the word for it…Like I’m conscious of it but it’s my self I’m conscious of…” (Barbie, 2023)

I must admit I am a little late to the “giant blow-out party with all the Barbies, with planned choreography and a bespoke song” viewing of the Barbie (2023) film, directed by Greta Gerwig. While I have no intention of offering a detailed analysis of Barbie for this blog, I am going to share a brief perspective in terms of Stereotypical Barbie and Ken’s initial experience of real world “everyday space” (Rose, 1993, p.146) to help better understand how space is affectively experienced.

The film begins by world building the political features of ‘Barbie Land’ for the audience. Barbie Land is depicted as a harmonious Barbie collective; a feminist community where all Barbies support one another to fulfil both individual and collective ambition. Importantly, all Barbies feel safe and included in their world because they control the levers of power (politics, judiciary, media, science etc.). As such, all Barbies have a “great day, every day” (Barbie, 2023). The same cannot be said for the masculine iterations of Ken though: Ken “only has a great day if Barbie looks at him” (ibid.). However, because “all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved” (ibid.), Barbie Land, from a Barbian perspective is perfect, and therefore, utopian.  

Unfortunately for the film’s protagonist, Stereotypical Barbie, her world of perfection dramatically disassembles due to the sudden onset of body and mind imperfections. Flat feet, bad breath, cellulite, and thoughts of non-existence rupture her assured idyll of the self; her typical sense of positive certainty shatters. A sense of precarity descends on Barbie’s outlook, dimming her usual unbridled radical optimism. To remedy, Stereotypical Barbie ventures into the Real World – the world we exist in and are familiar with – to locate and resolve the cause of her mind and body troubles.

Barbie, along with Ken, glide confidently into the Real World on neon rollerblades. They are attired in eye-catching day-glow, but out-of-kilter, clothing, setting them apart from everyone else in the “everyday space” (Rose, 1993, p.146) of California’s Venice Beach Boardwalk. Instantly, both Stereotypical Barbie and Ken are the object of attention, evaluation and judgement by other people navigating this everyday space, too. They both notice the contrast between the everyday spaces of Barbie Land space and Real World, revealing how everyday space is experienced differently in terms of perceived identity.

Stereotypical Barbie becomes acutely aware that her body is now being seen and tracked in the Real World, absent in Barbie Land, by a dominant heterosexual masculine gaze, which feels like “a thousand piercing eyes” (ibid.), as it judges her. Fixed stares, wolf whistles, and sexualised vocalisations by an array of men, reveal to Stereotypical Barbie the submission of her body to “objectification processes” as she attempts to move through this everyday space peacefully and without interference.

“What going on? Why are these men looking at me?”, enquires Stereotypical Barbie to Ken, as her eyes anxiously scan this everyday space, indicating that she is now “self-conscious about being noticed […], watched and judged” (ibid., p.145) in this environment.

Now, everyday space for Stereotypical Barbie “produces a sense of space as something tricky, something to be negotiated” (ibid.). It has become a “hazardous arena” (ibid.), an alien environment, leading her to observe that this everyday space has “very much an undertone of violence” (Barbie, 2023). In other words, Stereotypical Barbie is feeling the affect of being subordinately positioned in what feminist geographer, Gillian Rose, identifies as paradoxical space (Rose, 1993, p.140).

According to Rose (ibid.), experiencing space paradoxically occurs when an individual is centred and marginalised simultaneously; positioned as both insider and outsider. In this case, Stereotypical Barbie’s body is centred because it is the focus of attention, and subject to objectification processes, by those with power in the Real World (i.e., heterosexual men), while simultaneously being marginalised by those same people because Stereotypical Barbie can only be seen in terms of her body – the object of desire and consumption – not as a human being with equal intellect and worth. This is highlighted in the scene when Stereotypical Barbie is arrested for defending herself after experiencing sexual assault, not the perpetrator for committing the crime. Ken, on the other hand, experiences “no undertone of violence” (Barbie, 2023) in this everyday space. In fact, Ken very much feels “admired” (ibid.) because he only experiences being centred in everyday space positively, which contrasts with Stereotypical Barbie who is both centred and marginalised in everyday space negatively.

While some critics of the film may dismiss the pertinence of the points being made to audience about Stereotypical Barbie’s experience of everyday space, scholars Bäckström and Nairn (2018) demonstrate, through their research of skateparks in Sweden, how women and girls are indeed positioned in paradoxical space, affecting not only their experience of public space and its limiting effects, but ultimately “robs [them] of [the] right to be there” (Rose, 1993, p.143). This helps to explain Pierre Bourdieu’s recognition that male political dominance results in a “sort of socially constituted agoraphobia that lead women to exclude themselves from a whole range of public activities” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p.74): considered by Bourdieu to be a form of symbolic violence enacted on girls and women.

With this in mind, educators must be alert to the fact that all school spaces are “multi-dimensional, shifting and contingent” (Rose, 1993, p.140); they are also contested. If school space is coded as historically masculine and heteronormative, a “kind of property [formally] won” (ibid., p.146), a spoil to be maintained, then students will affectively experience these spaces differently. For some students, everyday school space will have no undertone of violence. However, for some, there will indeed be an undertone of violence, resulting in a ‘socially constituted agoraphobia’ that Bourdieu speaks of. As Fletcher (2023, n.p.) remarks: Barbie (2023) “makes smart and accurate commentaries about women’s experiences.” When you do watch, and I urge you do, I encourage you to adopt a Barbian inclusive gaze even if you think it will make you “kind of ill-at-ease” (Barbie, 2023).  

References

Bäckström, A. and Nairn, K. (2018) Skateboarding beyond the limits of gender? Strategic interventions in Sweden. Leisure Studies, 37 (4), pp.424-439.  

Barbie (2023) Directed by Greta Gerwig. Burbank, CA.: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant L. J. D. (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fletcher, H. (2023) Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is a ‘feminist bimbo’ classic – and no, that’s not an oxymoron. The Conversation [Online]. 19 July. Available from:< https://theconversation.com/greta-gerwigs-barbie-movie-is-a-feminist-bimbo-classic-and-no-thats-not-an-oxymoron-210069> [Accessed 15 March 2024].

Rose, G. (1993) Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Cambridge Polity Press.

Top Clips (2023) Barbie and Ken in the Real World Scene [Online video]. 12 September. Available from:< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dzTZIQziEs> [Accessed 15 March 2024].

Suggested citation:

Birkenshaw, C. (2024) Thinking with Barbie: Yay, [Paradoxical] Space. Altered States of Academia, 17 March [Online blog]. Available from:<https://alteredstatesofacademia.blog/2024/03/17/thinking-with-barbie-yay-paradoxical-space/> [Accessed ? ].