How did the Barbie birthday cakes of the '90s affect our perceptions of femininity?
It was my fifth birthday party. I had already rejected the frilly pink dress my mother had carefully chosen for me, opting instead for my usual uniform of the leggings-and-sweatshirt combo that was so popular in the late ‘90s. It was probably becoming clear to my parents that I was not the hyperfeminine little girl they might have expected; my obsession with insects nipped that dream in the bud relatively early.
We delivered her to the bakery section of our local Giant supermarket and handed her to a baker who told me, with a wink, that my doll was in good hands. I was unphased; I preferred my stuffed animals to the Barbie’s cold, plastic limbs and oddly protruding joints anyway. By the time the afternoon party had ended, the Barbie wasn’t looking so good. She was smeared with bits of sugary pink frosting, which had stuck in her plastic hair and ruined her painted-on makeup. Globs of too-sweet, half-eaten cake clung to her thighs. She had been left teetering on the edge of the cake plate, forgotten in the mad rush of overstimulated children toward the sugar-spiked delicacy.
In the late ‘90s, Barbie functioned as the face of what “modern” femininity was supposed to be. She may have started out as a fashion designer in the ‘60s, but by the ‘90s, she was a pilot, a firefighter, a dentist. We were told that women could be anything—they’d just better look perfect doing it. Barbie’s newfound financial independence apparently did not free her from the prison of appealing to the male gaze.
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