Navigating Barbie's paradoxical impact on Indian identity

In the run-up to Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated Barbie movie, here’s taking a look at the contentious relationship Indians have historically shared with this cultural icon

It was a regular day at home for teenager Krishna (name changed on request), when her then seven-year-old younger sister, while playing with her Barbie and Ken dolls, laughed and pointed out that she looked and dressed more like Ken than Barbie. Krishna, now 32, felt rattled. “I went to an all-girls school in Pune, and back then, I only knew that I liked dressing up in shirts more than dresses. I hadn’t entirely come to grips with my sexuality of being a lesbian, which happened several years later. But what my baby sister said made me feel extremely conscious of who I was,” she says. And so began her journey of wanting to act and behave more feminine. She forced herself to “look more like Barbie than Ken,” as her sister put it, and it was a rather misplaced transformation even her friends began noticing.

“Everyone, until then, had just accepted me as the tomboy who liked to wear her hair short, play some sports, and run around all day after school. While the occasional few made fun, it wasn’t something I ever paid attention to, until my sister said that and it changed something inside me. I felt less like a woman, especially because I was crossing over to my adolescence when hormones run high and everyone starts dating,” she says.

While she wanted to look like her sister’s Barbie dolls—a toy she had never been interested in playing with while growing up—a visceral fear towards the figure also surfaced, much to her surprise. One day, while dressing up to visit her friend in a newly-bought violet dress, Krishna looked into the mirror and realised her breasts didn’t look as perfectly rotund as those on the Barbie sitting on their study table. “I spiralled. I felt like a failure, and I ended up breaking the doll and every other Barbie doll my sister had. It was madness. My sister and I did not speak to each other for months after that,” she says.

While the episode is well in the recesses of her past, the shadow it cast continues to haunt Krishna. Today, she does not particularly hate Barbie dolls, but the buzz around Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming Barbie movie has triggered her significantly. It’s like moving back in time, she says, as people around her can’t stop talking about the “damn doll,” like they used to when she was in school. Now, as a sociologist, who is a visiting faculty member at a government college in Delhi, Krishna mentions that her curriculum focuses on the ways in which women’s bodies have been historically policed by capitalist cultures, especially in a post-World War era where their return to the workforce was seen as a threat by men. “I don’t know if Barbie in particular made me seek out this trajectory for myself professionally, but it definitely is a major part of this cultural dialogue we continue to have. And it’s all just coming back to me now,” she says.

When Barbie arrived in India

Manufactured by the American multinational toy brand Mattel, the Barbie doll arrived in India in 1982, merely a decade before liberalisation made her a household name. However, the doll’s relationship with the country has been contentious at best, and feeble at worst. Owing to the strict and prohibitory nature of India’s trade laws, Mattel could not sell dolls in the country until the late 1980s. According to a study titled ‘Globalisation Versus Normative Policy: A Case Study on the Failure of the Barbie Doll in the Indian Market’ by the Asia Pacific Law and Policy Journal, published by the University of Hawaii in 2011, the original Indian Barbie was made in 1981 for the International Collection, and was sold in the US and Europe. The brand chose to recreate the standard American blonde Barbie, and only put her in an Indian saree for her ‘desi’ version, as she was promoted alongside her white counterparts.

“Taking the standard Barbie and placing her in an Indian outfit seemed like an adequate alternative to the full-scale production of a genuine India doll, an undertaking that would require more people, more materials, and more work. Despite being an Indian marketing company, Blow Plast [an Indian toy marketing company Mattel had partnered with to sell Barbie in India, under the Indian affiliate Leo Mattel], had gained little momentum in its efforts to promote Barbie,” says Priti Nemani, the author of the study.

Therefore, a key reason behind Mattel’s failure to convince little Indian girls to pick up their doll, as the study too mentions, was her complete lack of relatability on foreign turf. “I loved the Barbies, since they looked so pretty and seemed perfect. But what I hated was the fact that she did not look familiar. The clothes I wore were too different from the ones Barbie wore. Plus, she wore lipstick but I could not,” says Nandini Pain, a 30-year-old consultant living in Mumbai. For Pain, despite, and perhaps because of Barbie’s lack of familiarity, she became a symbol of an unattainable perfection that one could only aspire for. “I think I felt that way because Barbie looked and ‘behaved’ perfectly,” she says, adding that for the longest time, she and her friends were obsessed with how flawless her legs were. Looking back, she realises that the doll may have done much more damage than one would like to acknowledge, leaving lasting impacts on impressionable minds.

For 37-year-old Gaura Samtani, a trade analyst based in Bengaluru, her entire childhood was spent wanting to be as “fair skinned and fashionable” as her Rapunzel Barbie doll, who wore stilettos that she was discouraged from wearing as a child. “My mother would just hide that and another Barbie doll that my uncle had gifted to me, so that I wouldn’t pester her to buy me more of them. I had driven my mom up the wall, begging her to buy me clothes like Barbie, and I even remember powdering my face for a few weeks when I was in junior school to be as fair as her,” Samtani recalls. The gap between what an average Indian girl looked like and what the dolls looked like kept widening right up till 1996, the year in which Mattel, for the very first time, took a genuine stab at making an Indian Barbie, instead of their “Barbies in India”—or blonde and brunette figurines in sarees—in order to redeem themselves in the market.

Unfortunately, however, Barbie continued to look resolutely American, with her complexion, eyes and built being altered ever so slightly. Moreover, the packaging boxes carried several misinformation on Indian life and clothing, including details like Indians never ate with knives and forks, and only used their hands. The fine print on some boxes also incorrectly termed a lehenga choli as a saree, which only pointed to the company’s lackadaisical attitude towards the market they were dealing with. “I think I still have one of those Indian dolls, and looking back, I realise it was just so confusing, and even offensive that the Indian Barbies were treated like lesser versions of their white counterparts. Like the company didn’t care enough to represent Indians accurately,” Samtani says.

Why Barbie meant different things to different people

The aspirational nature of the doll—a veritable cultural icon in her own right—however, has had far reaching repercussions beyond just her lack of physical and sartorial resemblance to Indian women. In this regard, Krishna does not find herself alone, as 25-year-old Royina Baruah, a psychotherapist based in Bengaluru, often meets clients who have had severe body dysmorphia owing to damaging imagery in pop culture. “Shockingly, there have been versions of Barbie like the ‘slumber party Barbie’ which came with a weighing scale and a diet book as a play accessory. Selling these to young children is quite irresponsible and even dangerous. As a therapist, I have seen many children and adults suffer with low self-esteem and other emotional concerns due to unrealistic body standards. Further, these types of toys also perpetuate an unhealthy relationship with food,” Baruah says.

But beyond her shape and size, Barbie was also a strong marker of class in a country like India, where lower-to-middle income families may still find it difficult to afford the toy. For Samtani, another important reason why her mother disallowed her from playing with a Barbie doll was because she was afraid that when her daughter would ask her to buy another one, she would not be able to afford it. “So she bought me cheaper dupes that looked similar to the Barbies, but not quite the same,” she says, adding that in hindsight, she does believe that the pressure on children from their wealthier peers to buy these dolls may have often put parents under financial duress. “I would be embarrassed to show my fake Barbie dolls to my friends, and always wished we could afford them. I even remember promising myself as a child that when I grew up and had more money, I would buy every single Barbie doll to ever exist. Thank god I don’t have such dreams anymore,” laughs Samtani.

However, not everyone has harboured only difficult memories associated with the iconic doll. As Baruah points out, Barbie was also important in fuelling the imaginations of generations of children who would create numerous scenarios involving the character, as the dolls often came in sets, or as a part of a larger universe—like a dollhouse, hospital, or school. Whether through class markers or those of gender and sexuality, Barbie granted children access into a world that they may not have otherwise been privy to. “Barbie has definitely played a major role in shaping ideals of body image and gender identity over the years, even in India,” says Baruah, adding that while Barbie may have pandered mostly to the male gaze over the decades and still largely caters to normative gender roles, it has often been subverted by individuals to break traditional gender norms.

It is a fact Barry Rodgers, a 34-year-old journalist based in Mumbai, is in agreement with. As a gay man who grew up around sisters and female friends who would often play with Barbies, Rodgers learned early in life that he was fascinated by the feminine form that found expression in the doll. However, his parents disapproved of him playing with them, and would instead hand him G.I. Joe figurines. “Barbie has always been instrumental in helping me come to terms with my identity, and helping me figure out who I wanted to be. I never wanted to dress up as a girl, but I have always appreciated fashion and the feminine form, so it was very aspirational for me,” he says. Rodgers now owns four Barbie dolls, which were gifted to him by a friend, and the thought of owning these dolls on his own terms feels liberating to him.

However, he argues that adults shouldn’t decide on behalf of children whether they should or should not play with certain items, and an intervention might only be necessary if and when a child begins to believe that they need to emulate someone or something in order to fit in. “For me, Barbies were an escape. Children should be allowed to play with whatever they want; boys should be allowed to dress up if they want to and stay at home and play with a cooking set if they want to. If anything, I believe Barbies propagate the idea that we can be glamorous and larger than life if we want to be,” he says.

Today, with conversations around gender and sexuality becoming more and more common in the average Indian household, the subversion of Barbie is, perhaps, not an impossibility any longer. Even Krishna, a life-long critic of the doll, believes that this is a welcome change, and one that she too has been noticing increasingly. “One of my cis-het male students, who is fresh out of school, recently told me that he is looking forward to the Barbie movie because he still likes looking at his Barbie dolls, even though he does not get much time to play with them anymore. I don’t know, maybe he will convince me to give Barbies another chance,” she laughs.

For 32-year-old writer Bedbyas Datta, who identifies as gender queer, dolls continue to be a source of comfort and company on days his home is empty. He wishes he had owned a Barbie as a kid. “I thought it was a toy with great hair,” he says, half jokingly. With the release of Gerwig’s film around the corner, Datta thinks it has helped him consolidate his gender identity further in myriad ways. “To hear of other people, younger than me, but adults, talking of enjoying this [the buzz around Barbie] is a cause of joy. I think dolls, in general, help to reaffirm aspects of you that don't get divided equally. There is some play element there which can override stereotypes,” he says, reminding us that it’s never too late for anyone to change the narrative and reclaim it—not even for Barbie, who turned 64 this year.

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