Barbie is one of the most perceptive depictions of female puberty that I have ever encountered.
As a child in the girl power culture of the 1990s, I knew that the time had come for girls to rule the world. I even had a notebook bearing the legend, "Girls rule, boys drool!" We could be anything we wanted to be: vets, astronauts, mermaids. All we had to do was dream hard enough. Our time had come.
But in the very success of Barbieland’s message of empowerment lies the seeds of its own destruction: its one-dimensional positivity cannot survive an encounter with the Real World. Henceforth, it can never be the innocent, sexless place it once was. Barbie struggles with who she should become in order to cope: airheaded bimbo serving the Kens? Depressed adult plagued by Irrepressible Thoughts of Death? Remain an eternal child rejected by her former childhood world? Fight to make everyone else change so she can stay the same?
