Hi, Barbie?

Well, friends. Here we are, nearly a year after the release of the Barbie movie, and 65 years after the doll debuted, still thinking about her.

Does the summer of 2023, when many of us first saw and debated the merits of Barbie, now seem like a simpler time? Sure, but if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s to get used to the sensation of multiplying crises and nostalgia for when the stakes felt lower. At this pace, how do we determine which parts of which cultural conversations to keep in the mix and which to cycle out?

We’ve made a decision, with this issue, to honor our strong reactions to Barbie – good and bad, and to the cultural figure as much as the movie – by keeping her in the mix a little longer. The humanities aren’t about hot takes, so we’re attempting to give this topic the consideration it deserves, even from where we sit in 2024.

There’s a dissonance that comes from researching, writing, and thinking about a topic so far removed from the most urgent conversations of the day. Let’s be real – this is a factor in doing fashion studies at the best of times. Our community knows why fashion history and theory are relevant to many, many topics of great importance, and we’ve all found ourselves needing to make the case to skeptics. Still, it can be a challenge to find purpose in this work when our notifications are flooded with all the horrors our research has no ability to fix.

I’m pleased to say that the writing in this issue addresses so many of the ways Barbie connects to bigger-picture questions: Zara Korutz and Frank New discuss how the doll has gotten it right (and sometimes less right) when it comes to her queer fanbase; Doris Domoszlai-Lantner and Petra Egri poke at the contradictions in her feminism; Keira Moore, Maya Revell, and Alliyah Moore, as well as Aliyah Martinez, offer their experiences as Black women consumers being sold Barbie’s version of DEI; others take up these and many more angles for investigating this complex, multitudinous figure. Barbie has represented so many different identities, from her origin in the mind of Jewish American Ruth Handler to her embodiment of a variety of other ethnic groups, sizes, and abilities. We should be examining her from as many sides, and always through the lens of liberation.

As our timelines roil with genocide, war, fear, and phobia, and we find ourselves unsure of where our voices belong, it feels important for us as an editorial group to return to a mission statement we wrote in 2021 (a simpler time… or was it??). We stated our intention to amplify marginalized voices and honest conversations, to prioritize perspectives that are equitable, feminist, queer, and actively antiracist. We remain committed to that agenda, and FSJ remains available to you, our community, as a place to come together in solidarity.

Fashion studies research isn’t going to single handedly bring peace and safety to the Middle East, or to any other region torn apart by conflict, nor will it stem the tide of global fascism, protect targeted groups from violence, repair the damages of colonialism, or reverse global warming. But when and where we can, we have to respond with the tools we have.

Thank you so much to the incredible contributors to this issue, who submitted from far and wide. Special thanks to Brian Centrone, who jumped at the chance to include his Barbie photography and ended up elevating the whole collection. Huge gratitude to Aimee Koran and Katya Moorman for the imagery that became the header above this letter. When the nonsense grinds you down, remember, you’re too pretty for this shit.

Peace,

Laura Snelgrove, Editor in Chief
on behalf of the FSJ editorial team


^{Me, admiring my DreamHouse. A simpler time.}

---

Notes: Letter from the Editor

[1] For examples of how fashion studies research published in FSJ has previously addressed one of today’s most urgent conversations, we encourage you to revisit Roberto Filippello’s interview with the designers of Trashy Couture and Joelle Firzli’s exploration of the kaffiyeh. FSJ stands firmly against the genocide being enacted in Palestine and in solidarity with the Jewish people around the world whose safety is threatened by rising antisemitism.

^{Brian Centrone has been in love with Barbie since the day he walked into a toy shop at five years old and saw her smiling at him through her box on the shelf. His love for Ken occurred when he hit puberty. Brian is a creative writer and a fashion historian.}

With your silky smooth,
platinum
hair
and
as silky nylon pink, full skirt,
the one with glow in the dark stars
and the also pink, stiff velour bodice trimmed in lace,
that compliments Ken’s gray, stiff velour tuxedo
which reminds me of my mother’s velour draperies,
the ones in her Spanish-Conquistador inspired bedroom,
deep green and very heavy,
very much like the portieres that Scarlett O’Hara had Mammy make her
a dress out of
in Gone with the Wind so she could get the tax money from Rhett Butler to save Tara.
Always for Tara.
Everything for Tara.
Ken’s vest which matches Barbie’s skirt with glow in the dark stars of his very own
and his hair,
not so silky smooth
and painted Brown,
perfectly molded
like his
flesh-colored briefs
so tighty but,
not so whitey.
Only Beach themed Ken had the plastic mound of
Manhood or lack there of
and that Ken was blonde,
but still all smiles and classically handsome
and so in love with the most beautiful girl in the world
who waltzed in and out of my life
like in the commercial with Ken
designed to sell:
“You can tell it’s Mattel!”
so that all the other girls could never live up to you,
or had to live up to you,
be like you,
look like you,
dream like you.
Our life that could have been,
altered quite suddenly,
unexpectedly,
when one day Ken showed up at MY dream house door
minus his molded briefs.

^{Dr. Julia Petrov is Curator of Daily Life and Leisure at the Royal Alberta Museum, and is adjunct academic staff at the University of Alberta. She researches and writes about dress history, gender, and museology. She is the author of Fashion, History, Museums: Inventing the Display of Dress (Bloomsbury, 2019).}

Imagination, life is your creation

I was born in the dying years of the Soviet Union and grew up amidst legendary queues and increasing shortages of consumer goods. Although my parents were middle class, and we lived in the capital, Moscow, which to some degree protected us from the hardships faced by people outside of the country’s urban centers, our family means were limited. Apart from a few stuffed animals and some random pieces of toy furniture (a child-size wooden chair, a tiny piano, and a doll crib oddly out of scale to anything else), at playtime, I had to make do with a small number of odd dolls.

My prized possession, named Lilya after the distant relative in Minsk who gave her to me, was a large doll dressed in a folk-style costume of lace-trimmed blouse and floral skirt. Her left arm was loose in its socket, which eventually led to my mother throwing her away while I was out for the day at school. But her prismatic blue eyes, fringed with long eyelashes, would close when she lay down (an engineering mystery that fascinated me almost as much as my classic nevalyashka doll’s ability to stand up when knocked down), and I learned to braid by playing with her thick, blonde hair.

I also had a much smaller plastic doll with curly auburn hair. I do not remember her ever having had any clothes, so I learned to modestly cover her nakedness by tying a selection of colorful plastic bags over her front (I was yet too young to learn to sew). Later, when I was closer to school age, family friends in West Germany sent me three Erna Meyer figures (all Victorian children) as well as two soft-bodied dolls dressed in athletic clothing. One of these was blonde and had an uncanny resemblance to my real-life best friend, so she was duly named Masha; I gave my best friend the brunette matching doll in remembrance of me, even though she didn’t look like me. All of my dolls looked like young girls, with pouting baby faces and unsexed bodies. 

“I have no concerns about Barbie’s influence on me. She enabled me to realize my ambitions and live as my authentic self.”

Life in plastic, it’s fantastic

The 1980s were a bleak decade to live in Russia. A series of increasingly old and decrepit Communist Party Chairmen had ensured the total stagnation of the economy, resulting in widespread shortages and rationing. Young people like my parents struggled to make ends meet even on a guaranteed income in a planned economy, and the increased transparency of Gorbachev’s glasnost made it even clearer that there was no hope for the next generation if the corrupt and hypocritical system was to continue. Terrified by the fallout from Chernobyl, but emboldened by the fall of the Berlin Wall, my parents were determined to escape. Drawing on family connections, they were able to obtain entry to Canada. We left the Soviet Union in September 1990, with 6 suitcases and $200 Canadian dollars - all that we were allowed to take with us to start a new life. I was eight years old. In the little backpack that I carried with me on the plane, I packed my own treasures, including my blonde West German athlete doll, and Erna Meyer figures [2].

For the first six months, we lived in the basement of the relative who had sponsored our immigration. The suitcases lay, permanently open, on the floor, my parents slept on a mattress on the floor in the spare room, and I slept on the taupe velvet sectional in the wood-paneled rec room. My parents found entry-level jobs, and I started school. Apart from the contents of my imported rucksack, I also played with the other denizen of that basement: a quilted tea cozy doll, dressed in a Russian folk ensemble.

These privations didn’t last long. As soon as my parents began getting paid at their new jobs (gas station attendant and nursing home assistant), they made my doll dreams come true. I soon received a pink cardboard box with a Barbie of my very own. Mattel had named her “My First Barbie,” and perhaps my parents took that moniker literally when they selected her at the store. She was dressed in an iridescent princess gown with a tiara. The colors and textures of her outfit fascinated me, and I was delighted when, a couple of years later, my grandmother found a similar dress at a jumble sale for me to wear as a costume.

One winter day, my parents hauled a huge box inside. They maneuvered it down the stairs and revealed the surprise: it was a Barbie dollhouse! Originally released in 1984, this four-room pink mansion (the Barbie Glamour Home) had a spiral staircase on one side, an imitation wicker swing on the other, and a rooftop patio. My father (an aerospace engineer) dutifully put it together for me, although we had trouble with the stickers that were meant to cover up the plastic beams that held it together, and some were forever upside down or wrinkled after our botched assembly. Even with its flaws, it was still a long way from the interiors in which I really lived. The dream of a better life, as painted by Barbie, was beginning to come true. A few items of furniture also followed, but I found them awkward and illogical, given that the dollhouse had images printed on its walls of the contents, and these didn’t correspond to the furnishings I now owned.

Not long afterwards, I received two more inhabitants for the mansion: a gift set of Dance Magic Barbie and Ken, dressed in iridescent white ballroom outfits. Ken’s hair changed color with the application of cold or hot water, and Barbie’s gown converted to a tutu; their fashion options seemed endless. Thereafter, family members always had gift ideas to fall back on at Christmastime and my birthday: my uncle scored a particular coup when he obtained the last “Totally Hair” Barbie in the city, in her Pucci-inspired mini-dress, after driving around all the city’s toy stores in a blizzard during the frigid winter of 1992.

^{Totally Hair Barbie, 1992.
Image courtesy of Mattel.}

At first, I was content to play with the dolls as they were presented. I even took a particular pride in keeping their outfits pristine and associated with their original wearers. However, as my collection grew, and was increasingly augmented by second-hand Barbies (and Barbie knock-offs), who wore scraps of clothing or nothing at all, even the packs of Barbie outfits available in stores no longer satisfied me.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere

In the summers, when school was out, my parents flew me to Boston, to stay with my grandparents and practice my Russian. My grandmother and her friends enjoyed Saturday morning “yard sailing,” (pun intended) where we would pile into the car, armed with the classified page of the paper and an address of a promising garage sale in a tony neighborhood. These experts knew, from pulling up to the curb, whether it was worth getting out; estate sales were vetoed on account of their inflated prices. In those days, the older residents of towns like Marblehead and Swamscott were selling vintage furnishings and household goods from the 1940s to the 1960s, and treasures could be had for just a few dollars. After the first sale, we would follow the homemade signs on the streets to others, sometimes going as far as Salem; if it hadn’t been a good day and it was still early enough, we would return home via the nearby flea market. My grandfather would then be entertained by a show-and-tell of our finds over lunch.

Naturally, I was always on the lookout for Barbies, but my grandmother had started to teach me needlecrafts, and I slowly began to also accumulate material to upgrade my Barbies’ standards of living. The first thing we made was some bedding (the bed itself being an upcycled polystyrene tray from some supermarket meat), but doilies, handkerchiefs, and small scraps of fabric proved useful for creating clothes. I eagerly snapped up vintage napkins, hem tape, lace, buttons, and headscarves at yard sales for a few cents each. Some of these notions are still in my stash to this day.

Another favorite destination in the summers was the Museum of Fine Arts. Knowing my love of dolls, my family pointed out a book in the gift shop: a Dover reprint of paper dolls originally published in the Boston Herald in the mid-1890s. Now that I had discovered crafting, I found paper dolls limiting to my imagination, but looking at the figures of the blonde and brunette models in their corsets and petticoats, I realized that their silhouettes and stiff posture were uncannily similar to my Barbies. In a sudden cognitive leap, I understood why I found the results of my sewing experiments making modern clothing for my dolls unsatisfying - their bodies were all wrong for contemporary styles. Another book purchase made that day was Joan Nunn’s Fashion in Costume, and her spidery line drawings of historic clothes were to become my guides to creating outfits for my Barbies which suited their corseted shapes.
And so, as a tween, without even knowing that’s what I was doing, I began to do research in dress history. I would carefully study a doll’s face and hair to determine the most suitable period for them, then consult my books for inspiration, and dig through my stash for appropriate materials. Partly because I came to Barbies so late, but mostly because I enjoyed the creative outlet and historical context, I continued to regularly sew costumes for my dolls well into my teens.

I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world

Being an introverted only child, I had no context for gauging whether my hobbies were normal. I continued with sewing because I liked it, and my passion and growing knowledge won over anyone who might have objected that I was too old to play with dolls. I was also fortunate enough to be surrounded by caring adults who nurtured my interests, including giving me reference books or sewing materials, and sharing opportunities to view historical costumes on display.

When I was 16, the local open-air living history museum hosted a fashion show, put on by the Vancouver-based curator and collector Ivan Sayers. My mother saw the ad in the paper, and bought us tickets. For two hours, models dressed in historical costumes from Sayers’s collection promenaded in the upstairs hall of an Edwardian prairie hotel, as he lectured about a century of fashion. I was stunned: here was a respectable middle-aged man who made a living doing what I was doing for dolls, but in real life?!?! Coming from a deeply conventional family of engineers, doctors, and academics, I had no idea that it was even possible to make a career out of fashion history that wasn’t designing costumes for stage and screen (the performing arts were looked on with great suspicion in my family). The seed was planted there and then - perhaps I could make Barbie play pay?

It took many more years for me to become comfortable with the idea of a career path in museums and academia, specializing in the history of dress. For me, play was incompatible with professionalism, and I had internalized what my fellow Canadian fashion curator Alexandra Palmer has noted as the negative stereotype of fashion curators as “style-obsessed ladies and gay men playing dress-up with large dolls” [3]. But looking back, it is undeniable that my years of costuming Barbie had been a form of apprenticeship.

Much has been written about Barbie, maligning her negative influence on young girls' understanding of their bodies and their prospects [4], but outside of the rigid parameters of a controlled psychological experiment, the reality of imaginative play is more complex [5]. While Soviet propagandists would certainly have disapproved of Barbie’s consumerist appeal, and my parents may have had doubts about the long-term feasibility of my choice of career, I have no concerns about the influence that Barbie had on me. She enabled me to realize my ambitions and live as my authentic self.

I made my last Barbie outfit when I was 27. I was working at a university in my dream job: lecturing on the history of fashion, and also curating a large teaching collection of clothing and textiles. My colleague and I were clearing out the workroom, and discovered a forlorn naked doll on a shelf. She might not have been a Barbie - perhaps she was a vintage Midge or one of Barbie’s other friends; she had strawberry blonde hair in tight curls to her shoulders, and I immediately envisioned her in an 1840s Romantic-era gown. I took her home and dug through my fabric stash until I found the perfect blue-and-white gingham to create a dress based on historic fashion plates. Appropriately attired, she was then returned to the bookshelf. My (former) colleague recently undertook another reorganization of the workroom, and gifted the doll to me in remembrance of our time working together. To me, the doll also represents the trajectory of my life: the choice my parents made to leave the deprivation of the Soviet Union for a better life in the West, which enabled me to follow my passion.

Postscript

It is late 2023, a quarter century after my first encounter with Barbie. Due to the war with Ukraine, Western film companies do not distribute movies like Barbie (2023) in Russia; the country’s Culture Ministry insists that the blockbuster hit doesn’t meet the nation’s traditional moral values and wouldn’t allow licenses to screen it anyway. The Ministry of Education had earlier proposed a ban on Barbie and her friends for allegedly being sexually inappropriate, an idea recently echoed by firebrand politicians.

Meanwhile, as I was writing this essay, I received word that my book about the history of fashion exhibitions has been published in translation. The Russian-language cover features Venus de Milo dressed in a suit, wearing sunglasses, a nose ring, and large headphones, all in shades of pink. I didn’t have any input in the design, but I appreciate its subversive ideological undercurrent.

Plus ça change.

---

Notes: Pink is a Tint of Red

[1] See Duijn, 2019.

[2] I threw out or gave these away about ten years ago, but by kismet, another one found its way to me this year - it was a stowaway in a vintage 1:12 scale dollhouse that I purchased secondhand with the intention of restoring it.

[3] Palmer, 2008: 47-48.

[4] See: Kuther and McDonald 2004; Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive, 2006; Sherman and Zurbriggen 2014; Nesbitt et al, 2019.

[5] See: Wright, 2003.


Additional References


Aqua. (1997). Barbie Girl [song]. Aquarium. Universal; MCA Records.

Dittmar, H., Halliwell, E., & Ive, S. (2006). Does Barbie make girls want to be thin? The effect of experimental exposure to images of dolls on the body image of 5-to 8-year-old girls. Developmental Psychology, 42(2), 283.

Dujin, M. (2019) Journeying to the Golden Spaces of Childhood: Nostalgic Longing in the Online Community The USSR Our Motherland Through the Visual Image of the Soviet Toy. In: Post-Soviet Nostalgia: Confronting the Empire’s Legacies, Edited by Otto Boele, Boris Noordenbos, and Ksenia Robbe, New York: Routledge, pp.21-37.

Gerwig, G. (2023). Barbie [film]. Warner Bros.

Kuther, T. L., & McDonald, E. (2004). Early Adolescents’ experiences with, and views on, Barbie. Adolescence, 39(153).

Nesbitt, A., Sabiston, C. M., deJonge, M., Solomon-Krakus, S., & Welsh, T. N. (2019). Barbie’s new look: Exploring cognitive body representation among female children and adolescents. PloS one, 14(6), e0218315.

Palmer, A. (2008) Untouchable: Creating Desire and Knowledge in Museum Costume and Textile Exhibitions, Fashion Theory, 12:1, 31-63.

Sherman, A. M., & Zurbriggen, E. L. (2014). “Boys can be anything”: Effect of Barbie play on girls’ career cognitions. Sex roles, 70, 195-208.

Wright, L. (2003). The wonder of Barbie: popular culture and the making of female identity. Essays in Philosophy, 4(1), 28-52.

<sup>Keira Moore is a PhD Candidate in Textile Technology Management at North Carolina State University. Keira's concentration is Consumer Behavior, with a specialization in Race, Anti-Racism, and Inequality Studies as it relates to marginalized populations purchasing patterns. Specifically, Keira's research sits at the intersection of identity and consumerism and how sociocultural factors ultimately shape the lens through which racialized consumers decide who, what, and where to purchase. Outside of academia, Keira loves indoor cycling, trying new restaurants, and spending time with her cat, Keiko.

Maya Revell (she/her) is a 3rd year PhD Candidate in Environmental Studies, Science, and Policy at the University of Oregon.  She has a focal concentration in Critical and Sociocultural Studies in Education and a secondary concentration in Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies. Broadly, her research focuses on Black relationships to land and water, Black-Indigenous solidarities, and co-creating livable futures.

Alliyah Moore is a first-gen Sociology PhD student at Howard University whose research interests are Black feminist theory, placemaking, and social movements. As an HBCU advocate, she received her B.A. in Political Science from Southern University and A&M College and M.S. in Sociology from Morgan State University. She was a Fellow at the Summer Institute in Anti-Racist and Decolonizing Research 2023. When she's not in class, you’ll find her hiking and photographing the U.S. National Parks.</sup>

Barbie, originally a plastic, white, and cisgender female-presenting doll figure, was created on March 9, 1959, to inspire all girls and women to imagine they could be anything. [1] According to Janelle Sessoms’ article titled “Barbie’s Revival of Hype Femininity is the ultimate Act of Feminism,” Barbie represents the ultimate feminist icon and the standard of femininity. [2] The lyrics of Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’  illuminates just that by stating –“I’m a Barbie girl in the Barbie world, Life in plastic, it’s fantastic, You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere, Imagination, life is your creation.” The question presents itself: In a capitalist, cisheteropatriarchal, and colonial context, has the delivery of this message of femininity and inclusivity through the production of Barbie done more harm than good? More specifically, we want to understand how the paradoxical aspects of the film, and the doll that inspired it, affect the subjectivities of viewers of color.

Feminist standpoint theorists have long argued that knowledge is socially situated, that marginalized peoples have unique knowledge due to their socio-political positions, and that attending to power relations in research requires acknowledging marginalized experiences as starting points. [3] Within feminist standpoint theory, Black feminist standpoint scholars have argued that Black women have and produce specialized knowledge about Black women, as this production involves “an interpretation of Black women’s experiences by those who participate in them.” [4][5] Black feminist standpoint epistemologies convey overlapping and tripled oppressions that often go unnoticed, attend to the nuanced subjectivities and experiences of Black women and girls, and hold space to imagine beyond the confines of white supremacist, capitalist, and cisheteropatriarchal societies.

First, as three Black women in the academy, we recognize our privilege to access and share knowledge. By dissecting the film in totality, we investigate its intentionality as we question whether Barbie is an example of a satirical work that encourages audiences to think critically about patriarchal and oppressive structures or a piece that mocks those current social and political structures. Additionally, we investigate anti-Blackness and the depiction of Barbie Land as an ideal feminist utopia. Through our Black feminist standpoint lens, we examine power imbalances impacting marginalized groups through neoliberal policies and practices. By situating Barbieland in the longstanding history of speculative fiction that centers the desires of white audiences through the creation of settler futurities, we aim to show how the utopic premise of Barbie fundamentally disregards and erases the current realities and possible futures of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized women. [6][7] That said, through this reflectional piece, we reflect on how the deeply embedded nature of whiteness shapes our abilities to imagine alternative realities as we urge our readers to create their own.

We analyze the 2023 Barbie-Warner Brothers Production using excerpts and stills from the film that highlight the irresolvable contradictions between the production’s alternative structures and our socio-political realities. Considering these paradoxical elements, we prompt readers to explore the possibilities for Barbie in current societal conditions and reimagine its future outside destruction.

“Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism have been solved”
-The Narrator

Following extensive global marketing, Barbie fans eagerly anticipated the Turbo-Charged release of Barbie, the film—for some an opportunity to relive childhood memories, for others to create new ones with friends and family. According to Sessoms, “Playing with Barbie told us that girls could do anything, and we didn't have to sacrifice our societally constructed understanding of "girlhood" to get there.”[2] However, the movie left some viewers questioning the intentional, binary constructions of feminism and womanhood and the pronounced contradictions of the portrayal of several intersections. Below, we explore some of our own such reactions to the film, individually and in conversation with one another.

First, Alliyah Moore begins to delve into her own uncertainty with director Greta Gerwig’s presentation of modern, intersectional feminism. Secondly, Keira Moore reflects on the invisibility Black and Brown women face in relation to their lived experiences in the modern world of “color blindness” and the insidious new face of American racism. Next, Maya Revell questions how the film’s portrayal of humanity relies on the exclusion of Black and Brown people, particularly women, and their experiences in the world. The authors conclude by emphasizing the film's denouement and advocating for a more realistic and impartial perspective, enabling readers to envision their own conclusion.

^{Zara Korutz is a New York City-based adjunct professor, host of Unbiased Label podcast, and Fashion Studies PhD Candidate at Massey University, New Zealand. She earned an MA in Fashion Critical Studies (with Distinction, 2020) from Central Saint Martins, London, U.K. Zara researches Virgil Abloh as the prototype of a new art-centered fashion designer looking at streetstyle as a reaction against mainstream society as it pertains to intersectional concepts of masculinities. For more information, www.zarakorutz.com}

Zara Korutz, Fashion Studies PhD Researcher at Massey University and host of Unbiased Label podcast, in conversation with Frank New, who is a New York-based Barbie collector and academic, through a queer lens. Frank received a Master of Arts in Costume Studies at New York University and travels the globe sharing their Barbie research. Zara and Frank chatted on a late Spring day in the recording studio located on Iona University campus.

ZK: Hi, Frank.

FN: Hello, Zara.

ZK: One of my favorite people.

FN: Back at you.

ZK: We're in the studio today. We've got all these Barbies. It's really quite lovely.

FN: Thank you. Thank you. You know, I have Barbies. Will travel. Thank you so much for having me.

ZK: I'm thrilled. You have no idea. You're known as the Barbie collector. When did this start?

FN: I suppose my fascination around Barbie began as a child, sort of very innocently. I didn't own any Barbies of my own, and I am quite sure that I was forever forbidden to own such things. My father was a person that had very toxic masculinity ideals, if you will. So, my doll play always resulted in being at a friend's place and playing with her dolls in secret. And then those years being compacted with toxic ideals from my father that “boys do this, boys do that”, but you don't do this, and you don't ever do that sort of thing, you know? So, I never dared bring up the idea of owning a doll.

ZK: That's because playing with Barbies as a boy was equated to being gay. And being gay was a bad thing.

FN: Totally, very much. My father made it very clear that I was supposed to carry on the family name, I'm to get married. Uh, he had this whole life built out in his head of what I was supposed to do. He comes from a military background.  I was supposed to enlist in the army and do the army way of life and, you know, maybe become an engineer or something, and truth is, he was in denial because it's always been very obvious of my sexuality. I've never been able to sort of hide that and coming out as a teenager, no one was really surprised, you know? Which is a good and bad thing.

ZK: You played with Barbies as a child?

FN: Yes. So, I played with Barbies secretly as a child. Secretly, in my very good friend's garage, and sort of left it there, and that's where the Barbie play stayed for the most part. I kind of left it behind and didn't revisit Barbie until my thirties.

ZK: Oh, wow. That's a big leap. What was the impetus to revisit Barbie?

FN: I feel like it was one of those things that really never left me, but it was one of those things where I had to really work through a lot of childhood trauma—things that I dealt with in my twenties and getting through that and coming out on the other side of that being at a place where I was starting to get comfortable in my skin. It was random. I was at a housing works and there was a Burberry Barbie that sparked my attention and caught my eye and it really started with that, that one Barbie.

ZK: It sounds like this was a reconnecting of your youth.

FN: Very much so. Oh yeah, that one doll kind of sparked the curiosity again, and then getting into the master's program at NYU, the passion around doll collecting really took off.

ZK: Did you enter NYU with the aim of academically studying Barbie?

FN: Not exactly. In the first semester, the final project was writing a submission for an actual call for papers. And initially I thought my research path was going to be somewhere around drag culture and that shifted to Barbie but telling the queer story of Barbie. So, it just kind of morphed into that call for papers, which from there just began the research path that I have followed over the last few years. I've gotten to travel the world and talk about Queer Barbie, which is just wild and crazy.