A strange thought?
This thought arrived at the museum today: What if! In an archive a thousand years from now, encased barbie dolls were displayed as proof of a goddess worshipping society?
Of course certain evidence would need to be lost, certain to remain, in order for an interpretation like this to take hold. Will we even have the conception of gender in a thousand years to connect the form of these dolls to such an idea? Does the sheer number of them existing in the world secure their longevity into the thousands of years?
To some, barbies are like goddesses. Many of them are fashioned after celebrities and styled in designer mini-clothing.
The inventer, Ruth Handler, ripped the concept for barbie off of a sexy German cartoon and doll, Bild Lilli. While that doll was originally marketed to men, this doll would be marketed to little girls, “to project herself into her dream of her future,” Handler told the NYT.
Project onto the doll any dream of any future, and she will grant passage.
These dolls do hold god-like powers of persuasion over the young—their bodies, how socially accepted they feel, their ability to prototype future scenarios. I’ve heard from a bunch of friends who try to raise their children in gender neutral environments only to have their toddler sons play with rockets and military toys, and girls lean toward feminine dolls.
So somewhere in the last ~60 years, could the barbie program have downloaded into our DNA?
As with any strange thought, it’s fun to take them seriously and absolutely lols at the same time~