Yes, as this Washington Post article reports, children routinely torture Barbie. The little boy in You Will Behave is not alone, though forced sodomy was not included in the list of crimes against plasticity. Just scalping, burning, and microwaving.
The University of Bath researchers who "uncovered" this vast worldwide torture ring offer a few possible motives, but I fear they miss the boat. Of course, if you want the real reason girls and boys torture Barbie, you'll have to read You Will Behave, but here's a few clues:
1. Perfection is aggressive and terrifying.
2. Beauty demands destruction.
3. When any child plays with a Barbie doll, whether they are young or old, boy or girl, the doll operates as a stand-in both for themselves and the unknowable other. The play is a navigation between these two extremes.
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5 comments:
i really enjoyed stabbing my barbie with a safety pin, marking her up with red lipstick to represent blood and cutting off all of her hair. what a freak....we're a perfect pair eh?!?!..between your book and my past torture tactics with barbie, we'll be lucky if no one takes the girls from us.
Matt, I saw this in the Reading Eagle fishwrapper last night. I was going to save it for you but now----.
Yep, it's a universal. Remember that Far Side cartoon where the kid throws his sister's Barbie out the window and says she committed suicide? My own brother was content just to pull the head off mine. Hmmm....perhaps that explains my lifelong horror of decapitation.
For my own part, it was my baby doll that suffered. Poor thing had smallpox, was attacked and mutilated by hostile indians (we were pioneers in a wagon train), and lost all but the shortest stubble of hair. She survived, but it wasn't pretty.
Don't worry Cheri, according to this study, we're actually normal. Feels good for a change doesn't it?
Thanks Dad, you know how I love my Barbie mutilation news.
Your right Sharon. It doesn't matter if it's a Barbie doll or a baby doll or some other piece of plastic designed to be beautiful and treasured. What I think this study gets wrong is that they see this as a sign of girls' anger toward their dolls. I don't think that's the case. The torture is probably equal parts love and anger--and that even goes for all the little brothers out there. Yes, love and anger and violence, all of which, in this form of play at least, seem to merge.
I never attempted to harm my Barbies in any way; it never even ocurred to me. This proves that I am a kind and gentle soul who is a lover of life and a maker of smiles. And it absolves me of at least a portion of the brutality I've inflicted on the people I've known in my life. In my defense, I was coked up at the time.
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