Aqua - Barbie Girl

Hi Barbie!
- Hi Ken!
- You wanna go for a ride?
- Sure, Ken!
- Jump in!

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

Come on, Barbie, let's go party ---


I'm a blonde single girl in the fantasy world
Dress me up, take your time, I'm your dollie
You're my doll, rock and roll, feel the glamour and pain
Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky-panky

You can touch, you can play
You can say I'm always yours, oooh whoa ---

Come on, Barbie, let's go party, ha ha ha, yeah
Come on, Barbie, let's go party, oooh, oooh
Come on, Barbie, let's go party, ha ha ha, yeah
Come on, Barbie, let's go party, oooh, oooh

Make me walk, make me talk, do whatever you please
I can act like a star, I can beg on my knees
Come jump in, be my friend, let us do it again
Hit the town, fool around, let's go party

You can touch, you can play
You can say I'm always yours
You can touch, you can play
You can say I'm always yours

Come on, Barbie, let's go party, ha ha ha, yeah
Come on, Barbie, let's go party, oooh, oooh
Come on, Barbie, let's go party, ha ha ha, yeah
Come on, Barbie, let's go party, oooh, oooh



Barbie Girl,a song released in 1997 performed by a band called Aqua, is a great song to be
analysed in terms of gender studies. First of all, since I could not bring my laptop, let me re-tell what is
the song about. It is about a Barbie and a Ken, a couple in which Barbie is a perfect meek girlfriend and
Ken is her perfectly masculine master. They go 'for a ride' to have fun and the next thing we find out is
that Barbie is 'a blonde bimbo girl' open to whichever action Ken wants to do over her.
Originally, the song was meant to be rather a parody on what it meant to be a woman in 1990s. In
other words, the song criticized the imperative of being an ideal that is served to a woman, who started to
wear loads of make up, hair-dyeing became more frequent, usually they dyed their hair to blond because
it became 'in' in early 1990s. So, as it seems, the song was supposed to be an act of resistance to the
mainstream perception of how all women should look like. However, the audience took it for granted and
you could hear many girls singing the song proud to wear lots of make-up, proud in dyeing their hair,
dressing minimally, all in 'girly' colors etc or many guys proud to be superior over their girlfriends, to be
the fist of force, the one who makes the decisions that are necessarily followed by their girlfriends.
However, the song may also be seen as an affirmation to the mainstream imperatives, showing
female body as main commodity, entirely erasing any possibility of female self-confidence or any
rights or independence on men, as a matter of fact. It is confirming all the 'gender rules' related to outfit
( i.e. boys wear blue, whereas girls wear pink; girls wear far more jewelry than men etc.) and behavior
(i.e. submissiveness vs. superiority). Therefore, it could be seen as a defender of the thing as they are
rather than as a form of resistance to the mainstream. But let us just take a look at the video; probably
most of you remember it, since we were the audience was addressed to.
Barbie, that is to say the female singer is NOT a blonde but a brunette, with long hair, manicured
nails, all modern, thin, dressed in pink, she has loads of make-up on etc. When Ken comes, we see Barbie
watering the flowers and wiping the table, but as soon as Ken calls her 'for a ride', she leaves it all and
does as he wished it, which again reasserts patriarchal relations, even in the 'perfect' world. On the other
hand, Ken is all in blue, modern, he has an earring, fancy watch, sitting by the pool and so on, which
suggests that he is also wealthy, something a desired man should be. So, these two are obviously
gendered, both in terms of their physical appearance/outlook and in terms of the was they behave. Barbie
is lady-like, a housewife ready for a party each time her 'man' calls her, evidently submissive to the
societal norms. However, in some shots Barbie wears blue and Ken wears pink, which is a quite vicious
counter-argument to the claim that the song is reinforcing the 'blonde bimbo girl' imperative. Unlike her,
Ken is pretty much doing whatever he wants to, he is superior and all he wants is fun, party, that is to say
her body.
?
Regardless of all this, Barbie still loves him eternally not even questioning his love.
Consequently, companies that manufacture Barbie dolls press charges on the band, but these were
soon dropped. They accused Aqua of making their product, a Barbie doll, a sex symbol. This is a rather
ridiculous claim, since Barbie doll is 'sexed' from the very beginning. She has curves and all the body
parts a real woman has and, unlike Ken, she does not even has underwear. Ken, on the other hand, though
he has muscles, has no hairs and he has underwear made so that it cannot be removed (now, tell me, who
made Barbie a sexual object, the band or its manufacturer?). As a matter of fact, the manufacturers
should be charged for teaching our kids how to 'do gender', since they are role models for many girls
while growing up. A girl sees how her Barbie doll is dressed and she starts copying the styling; later on,
she sees how thin the doll is so she starts eating less in order to have the desired looks.
In conclusion, Barbie Girl is a text that could be observed from both angles. However, the
examples named above suggest that the song is a rare case of resisting the mainstream fashion and that it
is meant to make us see how ridiculous it really is when looked in someone else's eyes. In spite of its
ambiguous aim, the song is quite interesting not only in terms of gender studies but also in terms of
exploring the ways of criticizing a system in a way that seems to support and extol all its practices.