Barbie Feminist

Ok so in high school i was this card carrying feminist.  Ya know, the kind that cut their hair short, listen to le tigre on their walkman that is covered in riot grrl pen graffiti and stickers, and have picture of kathleen hannah all over their school binders with bikini kill lyrics scrolled over every page of her text book.. yeah.. I was "one of those". But over the years I have matured into a fine young woman and my opinions have changed a lot. I think the biggest problem I have with most feminists is the fact that they are indeed, Misogynists.  When I was a kid me and my friends used to constantly put down other girls because they were "barbies"yet I don't think we realized that we were actually criticizing  people that we did not even take the time to know. We just assumed they were stupid bimbo's that only cared about boys and lipstick jut because they listened to brittany spears and were in show choir. We thought they were weak because they were "girly". Is that not the same attitude that misogynistic men have towards women?

 Back in the day I used to dress really tomboyish (still do sometimes haha) and did this not because I really liked wearing jnco jeans and band t-shirts. I did it because I thought it's what "feminists" were supposed to do. I thought we were supposed to distance ourselves as much as possible from any kind of girly image because that meant we were the weaker sex. Throwing on a pink dress with cute heels to me back then meant that I was giving into to mens needs and not my own, when in reality.. I really did want to dress girly but I was afraid to. For one I knew if I did my other feminist friends were going to make fun of me, and for two, in a way I was rebelling against my mom a bit. She always wanted me to dress girly and even though I wanted to deep down inside, I always denied it. I still remember the first day I cropped off all of my hair and gave myself a fashion mullet, my mom was not very pleased but over time she just began to accept the fact that I was a teenager expressing myself and she eventually stopped trying to force me to wear girly clothes.  One day though all this changed.

In my senior year of high school I had finally decided that I was going to quit denying myself of dressing the way I wanted to. We had just moved back to Virginia around this time and I decided to give myself a whole new look. I still had the short hair and all, but I started to dress in GASP* PINK CLOTHES! My clothing style still was based off of punk rock and goth fashion.. But I was not wearing 32 inch wide pants with Marilyn Manson t-shirts anymore. I was  wearing dresses. YES DRESSES that were similar in style to clothes from Betsey Johnson and Liz Lisa. The Urban Outfitters dress section became my new favorite spot!  When I enrolled back in Powhatan High I was feeling pretty confident. My old friends however, were not feeling my new look. One girl in particular stopped talking to me all together. I guess it is because she felt like I was betraying the "Riot GRRL Scene". Basically the only people i had left to hang out with were all guys (both and gay straight, the gay guys at my school LOVED me). I was so shocked that guys were accepting me but my girlfriends were not. I had a lot of guy friends senior year and I think that was due to the fact that they thought I was a bad ass chick because I liked to listen to Metallica and I did not look like a gross metal head guy (yeah the girls that liked metal at our school were all butch).

Since high school has ended I continue to dress that way I actually want to dress because I feel no obligation to play the roll that a scene wants me to play. I actually fucking hate riot grrl music now and i ended up deleting al my my albums I had except for hole albums and that's because courtney is a lot like myself, she does not give a fuck if feminists criticize her for not dressing like joan jett.

Now I am gonna bring up a short story that I think I bitched about the other day on facebook. Anyways, I was at target a few days ago searching for toys to buy for my ten year old sister for Christmas. As I was walking down the girl's isle and I noticed there was a very slender faced, dark, 30 something sinister looking goth woman complaining about all the Barbie Dolls. Her and her husband were shopping for toys as well and she was very displeased to know that there were no science toys at all. I just thought to myself, ok you are looking for science kits at Target, what did you expect. Everyone knows you have to buy stuff like that from http://www.smithsonianstore.com/toys/ .  This woman went on and on about how Barbie's were bad for little girls and how they pull down a girl's self esteem. I mean really? a piece of 9 inch plastic and synthetic hair ruins self image? How is that even possible. Everyone should know that little girls understand that Barbies are toys and that real women do not all look like Barbies. Ruth Handler did not make Barbies to intimidate girls, she made them because her daughter was growing up and during that time period in America the only dolls girls had to play with were baby dolls.  She wanted her little girl to have a doll that had more grown up features because her daughter was growing older and was growing bored with bottle feeding plastic babies. I noticed that he woman at the target has two babydolls sitting in her basket. I mean, if you ask me buying babydolls is about as un-feminist as you can get. Teach your little girls that they are only meant to serve the purpose of being a mother? really? Barbies has had 108 career changes, she has been a teacher, a doctor, a vet, a flight attended. You name it she has done it! most women go through life only having one carrier. Barbies teaches girls that you can be whatever you want and that there are no limits! I have no clue how Barbie makes girls have a negative self image. Yes she is very "fake" looking by most peoples standards of beauty but so what? Is there some kind of law book that states that you must be a frumpy woman that wears her hair in a bun and thick rimmed horn glasses in order to be considered smart and successful? In my opinion, Barbie is a  role model doll. She looks good and she is able to have a carrier! WOW! beauty and brains! I wanted to give this woman a lecture but I thought it would have been a waste of breath so I just let her be. I continued to shop for barbies and bylthe dolls will ms. negative nelly continued to search for her babydolls and crystal making kits. (by the way I had a smithsonian crystal making kit and it was AWSOME!)  That's another thing I forgot to mention. When I was a little girl I had both mountains of books about natural science subjects as well as a pile of barbies shoved into an oversized pink plastic house.

I guess the message I want to get across here is that girls should never be made to feel like they have to fit the mold for being a feminist. You can be just as much as a strong women in a dress and stilettos as you can be in baggy pants and an oversized shirt.  There is nothing wrong with both ways of dressing, it is up to a girl to choose who she wants to be and she should feel pressured by men, feminists or anyone else to dress or act a certain way.