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Mattel announces a new line of Barbie career dolls representing the careers of women in sports.
Editor’s Note: Amy Bass (@bassab1) is a professor of sports studies at Manhattanville College and the author of “One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together” and “Not the Triumph but the Struggle:” The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete” among others. The views expressed here are solely hers. Read more opinion on CNN.
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With a worldwide box office gross of $1 billion that continues to hold, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” has dominated just about every space in the summer of 2023, but like any good moneymaker, Barbie isn’t quite done yet. (CNN and the distributors of “Barbie” share a parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery.) Mattel is now sending her into the most male-dominated fields: the sports industry, part of the company’s Barbie Career of the Year dolls.
“This year,” Mattel announced in a press release, “Barbie is proud to introduce the Women in Sports lineup as Career 2023 because women are vastly underrepresented in the sports industry – from positions on the field to leadership positions in the sports industry Dressing room.” the year.”
Does this new general manager Barbie, wearing a blue power suit, know exactly what landscape she’s entering? Do coach Barbie with the pink megaphone in her hand and referee Barbie, dressed in the traditional black and white stripes of a sports official, know how rare women like them are on the field? Will sports reporter Barbie use her handy notebook and microphone to document her travels?
In the matter-of-fact (hello, “2001: A Space Odyssey”) opening of Gerwig’s film, little girls violently smash their baby dolls in the wake of the stereotypical Barbie’s appearance. This new kind of doll allows them to shed the role of mother in their play fantasy and live in the beautiful world she inhabits, a matriarchal pink fantasy where every day begins awash in a sea of ”Hello, Barbie!” . Greetings and women run everything.
Of course, on the film’s journey of self-discovery, Barbie learns how society—real-world society—and its institutions benefit men. Sport, of course, is one of those institutions, and the aftermath of August’s FIFA Women’s World Cup final looms as an example as glaring and glaring as Barbie’s own dream house.
Spain’s victory celebration at the World Cup, which came after months of players’ battles with their own association, largely because of the practices of then coach Jorge Vilda, to reach the podium, was short-lived. Her victory was soon eclipsed on the world stage by the actions of Luis Rubiales, the head of the Spanish Football Federation, who kissed player Jenni Hermoso during the trophy ceremony without her consent.
The drama in the days that followed shouldn’t surprise anyone who follows women’s sports, perhaps especially when Rubiales’ so-called apology included a refusal to resign over “false feminism,” a statement that some of his colleagues cheered.
While FIFA suspended Rubiales for 90 days and Spain eventually fired Vilda (albeit with a statement praising him for the success of the program and for his “impeccable personal and sporting conduct”) and appointed Montse Tomé, the first woman to The Spanish national team led the team, in his place the saga continues, with Rubiales’ future still unclear.
Hermoso, meanwhile, has filed an official complaint against Rubiales in a bid to shake off the stagnation and move things forward, supported by players who say they will not return to the pitch without a change in leadership that goes beyond the appointment of a female coach and goes deeper, systemically . Yes, Vilda is gone. But instead of celebrating Spain’s first World Cup title, Hermoso (for all intents and purposes the wronged party here) is forced to take further action to demand accountability, while his teammates (who should also still be celebrating) go on strike until there are signs of a widespread defeat It is clear that there is change.
Do the new sports Barbies (or the parents who might buy them, or the children who might play with them) understand what women, even at the highest levels of sport, need to do to make things work?
The examples seem endless at the moment. Simone Biles made sure her return to the sport that she not only dominates but defines goes well. It took a few years after the Tokyo Olympics for her to find personal joy and put the dark legacy of Larry Nassar behind her by returning to claim an unprecedented eighth national title that included a historic Yurchenko double pike on vault and a floor exercise for the ages (that second tumbling pass with the front layout full exit and double-double landing…come on).
And this safe? She received a deduction because her coach Laurent Landi was standing nearby. Why was he there? Because it’s the craziest jump ever, her scores are so high that she has more than a few points to spare, and – wait for it – it helped her feel confident doing something no other woman does. On Thursday, Biles, who has largely kept his future plans quiet, told the Today Show that competing in another Olympics in Paris in 2024 “would be the path I would like to take.”
Maybe referee Barbie could try to change the spotting rules before that happens?
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Or maybe tennis star Coco Gauff, who is currently cranking up the heat at the US Open, could use some help from Coach Barbie so that she doesn’t have to tell the men in her player box, namely Brad Gilbert, to “stop talking” midway through. She turned things around in her fourth-round match against Caroline Woznacki. Gauff later said that she enjoyed “thinking in my own way and finding appropriate solutions,” for which she was praised by trailblazer Naomi Osaka, who Gauff viewed as “a role model” for her young daughter because of who she is who expresses his opinion. And with the ability of coaches to communicate with their players from the court during matches, and the focus that reporting places on those conversations, the narrative around women’s tennis has a more clearly male voice, since the overwhelming majority of these coaches do not does. I don’t look like Coach Barbie.
These moments illustrate how these athletes live in a world full of contradictions and mixed messages, negotiating autonomy while trying to win. But if the soaring ticket prices for Gauff’s final against soon-to-be world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka (who fought her way to the final against both Madison Keys and a very partisan New York crowd) are any indication, women’s sports are continues to have special value, culturally, socially and – oh yes, get the General Manager Barbie now! – economical. However, Mattel could easily sell more of these dolls than there are women in the respective positions, at least for now.
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