Kate Miller

Civic Artifact Speech Script

Did you have a favorite toy as a kid? Maybe it was Legos, an action figure, or an
American Girl Doll. One of my favorites was Barbie.

I loved using my imagination to make her go on adventures, and I overall felt

represented by her as a kid.

To go into the history a little bit - the first Barbie was invented in 1959 by a
company called Mattel. Since the original release of the Barbie 60 years ago,
Mattel has struggled to make Barbie inclusive of all women. It wasn’t until the
early 2000s when the company came out with Barbies with darker skin tones, and
it wasn’t until 2015 when they came out with different body types for Barbie.

From the early 2000s to 2023, Barbie continued to exist as a toy doll for children.
However, in summer of 2023, director Greta Gerwig directed a live action Barbie
movie starring Margot Robbie as Barbie. Overall, the movie encompassed the life
of the original Barbie as she worked to find her place in society by seeing the real
world - our world - for the first time.
Though the original Barbie doll from the 60s and the 2000s and the Barbie movie
from 2023 may all have some positive messages regarding feminism, they also
both still represent a “white feminism,” where they lack important pieces of racial
diversity. There are also issues of gender equality and women empowerment that
women need to see, and the country needs to support.

The movie was inclusive of different ethnic backgrounds in the different Barbies
who were present in Barbieland but was unable to display them working to find
their place in society as well; it only focused on the original Barbie, with the rest of
the Barbies playing “side characters.”

Imagine seeing the Barbie who looked like you being portrayed as a side character.

This is similar to the original Barbie, where Mattel has still not solved the issue of
ethnic equality and representation. Perhaps the movie could have encompassed the
growth of several Barbies as they took different paths in the real world for all
women to feel represented.

In the movie, the setting shifts between Barbieland, where the Barbies and Kens
live, and the real world, where we live. The original Barbie enters the “real world”
and realizes that men and women do not have an equal role in society. The real
world pictures a makeshift Mattel company, where the entire head of staff is men.

This shows the metaphor that all Barbies, which includes the Kens, don’t have
equal control over the real world yet.

This is a misrepresentation of the original Barbie, which aimed to motivate girls to

chase their career goals, whether it be Corporate Barbie or Doctor Barbie.

Also, if the Barbie movie’s intention was to display modern feminism, does that
mean that modern feminism is a world where women triumph over men? It is clear
that the Barbies, not the Kens, rule Barbieland.

The original Barbie had a lack of representation of male characters, having only an
original Ken doll, and the Barbie movie is showing signs of excluding men again
as we persuade the country to support female empowerment. In reality, the push for
female empowerment is to have women and men be equal, not to reverse the
gender positions from how they used to be. I feel as though the Barbie movie
misrepresented the female empowerment movement.
For years, Barbie encountered negative feedback from users, but after the Barbie
movie came out, many women began to see her as a role model. This was because
the movie moved to the non-physical side of Barbie and discussed many modern-
day emotional and mental issues that women face.

The movie may not reflect the diversity among Barbies, but it still demonstrates
that each woman and each person has a worth, no matter what struggles they’re
facing.

Though the Barbie franchise has tried for several years to represent all women, it
fails to show the variety of ways that every woman and every person can be
successful in the world.

The movie ends with the song “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish, which
steers the viewer, who may be a little girl, into wondering what she was made for,
and how she can be successful. Does she think she is made to be Barbie?

The answer is no, women were not made to be Barbie, not in the 60s or now. That
little girl, playing with her Barbies in the way I used to, is meant to be a woman in
society who goes after her goals and feels included by her environment.