SEPT 9 — I spent Merdeka in search of the Barbie Princess and the Pauper doll. My six-year-old had been doing well at school, and as a reward, I agreed to get her something she’s wanted for over a year now — the aforementioned doll.
Gentle reader, do not judge me.
Before I actually had a child, the thought that I would be the kind of mother who bought her daughter Barbie dolls would have been unthinkable. The doll’s unrealistic representation of the female body, perpetuation of gender stereotypes and general air-headedness goes against every one of my feminist ideals.
Furthermore, as an Asian schooled in the identity politics of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, I read them as tools of oppression, effectively promoting feelings of insecurity about one’s cultural identity.
But, clearly, feminist theory and Fanon, as useful as they are in building credibility when casually dropped into a newspaper column, are pretty useless when it comes to the daily job of child raising.
My acquiescence to the world of Barbie comes not from a change of heart. Rather, it is the realisation that there are greater evils out there. To wit, the Disney Princesses juggernaut.
In 2000, Disney repackaged the heroines of its animated classics — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, and Little Mermaid — into the Disney Princesses. It’s a franchise that has spawned merchandise like a feral cat on fertility drugs, raking in millions for the parent company.
Disney also included Princess Jasmine of Aladdin, Mulan, Pocahontas and Princess Tiana of The Princess and the Frog into this pantheon. These last four are smart, assertive and self-reliant — the kind of positive influence any parent would welcome. However, they are barely present in the actual merchandise. More’s the pity since they would have also added much-needed diversity to the line-up.
Extracting the princesses from their narrative de-contextualises them. It distils the worst aspects of these fairy tales, leaving out the charm and fantasy the originals offered. What is left? A vacuous “damsel in distress” mind-set that women have long tried to dispel. The Disney Princesses imperil every child who comes into contact with them, possibly leading to said child becoming a Satan-worshiping, plastic surgery-addicted hot mess.
My daughter can’t get enough of them.
And, so, the unthinkable. When my daughter wants yet another Disney Princess DVD, I actually try to get her to choose a Barbie movie instead. In these movies, Barbie assumes the character of a well-known fairy tale heroine (Princess and the Pauper, Barbie Fariytopia, etc). She vanquishes the villain and saves the prince.
Significantly, in a number of these films, Barbie chooses not to ride off into the sunset with him. In fact, central to the plot is not the love story between Barbie and the handsome prince, but the theme of female friendship. These movies are surprisingly empowering.
Nonetheless, other aspects of the movies and the dolls make me want to immediately lecture my daughter on misogyny and its many shiny pink disguises. It’s also not too difficult to see that Mattel’s re-branding of Barbie has much to do with grabbing a piece of the market spawned by the Disney Princesses phenomena.
Recent statements from Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin make me wonder if he represents the political equivalent of my Barbie problem. Like Barbie, Khairy Jamaluddin is not someone who has inspired a lot of respect or trust in me.
I have found his statements and positions on a range of issues over the past few years disingenuous, opportunistic and ethnically chauvinistic. Perhaps I judge him more harshly because I expect better leadership from a young Malaysian who has had the privilege of an exceptional education and clearly possesses a deep and agile intelligence.
The emergence of Datuk Ibrahim Ali and Perkasa has served Khairy well. In recent months, all the air in our public space seems to have been sucked up by Perkasa (the Disney Princesses in the game of equivalents I’m playing here). Voices of wisdom and integrity from various quarters, have been threatened, slandered and silenced.
Khairy Jamaluddin, too, has raised his voice against Perkasa on several issues. While his positions lack the consistency to be, as yet, convincingly moderate or inclusive, in comparison to Ibrahim Ali, he looks good.
I’m not making a case for the lesser of two political evils. Nor am I urging political pragmatism in deference to our “delicate” balance of races or any of the other trite things we are fed by our self-serving leadership. I am, instead, joining my fellow Malaysians in lamenting how far we’ve slid away from responsible, accountable leadership in our country today.
When it comes to my daughter’s toys, I can allow for the presence of Barbie. I know that I have the freedom and opportunity to fill her world with wonderful books and real-life role models that counterbalance any negative gender and ethnic stereotypes the doll conveys. My daughter’s world is not constrained between the rock of Disney Princess and the hard place of Barbie Mermadia.
Some 30-odd years of corrupt, repressive leadership seems to have robbed us of the ability to sustain alternative paths to political power other than through racially divisive tactics. We live in a world where our choice seems to lie between naked extremism and naked ambition.
Having used the rhetoric of race to win political office, the Umno Youth leader finds himself now out-flanked by a darker, more extreme manifestation of the same. While I’m pleased that he’s come out against some of Perkasa’s statements, I remain, for the moment, unconvinced. There is enough to suggest that political opportunity’s knocking can be answered by donning many different guises.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.