Comments on: Oriental Barbie

By: onebrownwoman

onebrownwoman — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:04:08 +0000

this is a lovely post - you’ve articulated the problem of “oriental” so well - You’re totally right - some of the other descriptions are nightmares compared to this one. I’m always so angry at the use of “oriental” as a way of attempting to group an entire continent’s worth of culture as well as people’s continual denial at why the term is offensive. It’s about the history that it was created in and the colonizers it was created by.
Also, I just have to say, I’m never a fan of calling someone’s apparently traditional clothing a ‘costume’. I think it’s because it reminds me of white folk dressing up as “ethnic people” for halloween.

Keep writing when you have the time! Hopefully you’ll find someone to guest blog for you, though I don’t know if they’ll be as awesome

By: Sigel Phoenix

Sigel Phoenix — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 06:14:03 +0000

arielladrake: Thanks for the information. At the very least, I can consider this a tiny bit of comfort.

By: arielladrake

arielladrake — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 04:02:27 +0000

Sigel Phoenix: Actually, looking at the site-listing again, whilst Oriental Barbie’s listed last, it looks like she was made first; 1981, with the others in the later 80s and 90s. So they did like, go back and realise there were other countries. Still stereotyped the crap out of them, in a very *headdesk* inducing way, of course. But, yeah. I can’t remember if I had a point, really.

By: SunlessNick

SunlessNick — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:12:40 +0000

Tekanji: Your assessment of Americans goes pretty well for us Brits as well.

By: Disidentification Barbie « Woman of (an)other Color

Disidentification Barbie « Woman of (an)other Color — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:24:56 +0000

[...] So, my last post on Oriental Barbie was wonderfully expanded upon by tekanji over at shrub.com. For my feminist theory class, we were reading a passage from Grewal and Kaplan’s “Scattered Hegemonies” that problematized the binary of “global” and “local”. Using Barbie as an example, questions were posed as to why Barbie is sold in India but not Cabbage Patch dolls - why only North Indian clothes are put on Barbies, not South Indian. Why Barbie is dressed in “traditional” clothes, but Ken remains in Western clothing. Clearly, I have to read the full essay that answers these questions. And when I find time, I will. [...]

By: Sigel Phoenix

Sigel Phoenix — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:08:31 +0000

“Oriental” Barbie? Wow, I (almost) can’t believe they did that. Especially after doing dolls for individual Asian countries.

What a perfect example of the inept liberal non-racist. They even tried to use “exotic” as a compliment.

By: Revena

Revena — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 20:10:33 +0000

I do one-of-a-kind fashion dolls, and I really like the Dolls of the World line for that purpose, because they tend to be really interesting face sculpts, and have cool hair, etc., etc.

But the way that a single female doll is set up to represent a culture - sometimes a “culture” that doesn’t actually exist - is indeed troubling. On the one hand, I think it’s very cool that Barbie has this series of dolls that are much more diverse than the blonde doll that was ubiquitous in the 80’s and early 90’s. And, as I say, the quality of the craftsmanship in that line of dolls tends to be higher, which makes them attractive to OoaK artists and collectors. But I think I like the message sent by the new(ish) Fashion Fever line much better - those dolls come in a variety of skin-tones, face sculpts, and hair styles and colors (which could still be pushed farther, don’t get me wrong! But they’ve made a decent start), and there’s no copy on the packaging that differs between different dolls in the line, or Others any particular doll.

Now if only Mattel would use some of the variety in the Fashion Fever dolls and start launching a Career Barbie series that goes beyond nursing and teaching, or something!

By: tekanji

tekanji — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 02:22:03 +0000

Ariella: Oh, come on, don’t you know that Lucy Liu is really white? No Charlie’s Angel would be anything but a beautiful representation of the all-American woman. (’scuse me while I go wash out my mouth with soap)

Denise: I think that Americans tend to assume that since they can only speak one language, that the same goes for everyone else. Not to metion that Americans can only come in white or black (and the latter aren’t as good/pure as the former, of course!). Everyone else is just a dirty foreigner. Days like these I’m ashamed of my country. ._.

By: Denise

Denise — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 02:12:53 +0000

I don’t buy veggies from one particular stand at the Farmer’s Market where I live because I overheard one of the proprietors guffawing as he shilled his wares about how “those Orientals eat dock root” and he thinks it tastes like dirt so how can anybody eat that stuff? They must be desperate! It was reminiscent of so many times I’ve talked about tofu with strangers. I couldn’t believe that someone would be so blatant in making assumptions based on hearsay and then disparaging an entire third of the world’s taste in food, especially while a dozen or so people of various Asian ancestry walked by. I guess the assumption was that they didn’t speak English? Except that in my experience most of our foreign graduate students (most visibly ethnic Chinese and Indian) have excellent English skills, and a goodly number of our appaerent ethnic Chinese and Indian students grew up in the US. Ignorance, ahoy! You might expect better of the hippies, but it’s not happened yet here.

By: arielladrake

arielladrake — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 05:57:36 +0000

Also, reading onebrownwoman’s post reminded me of a somewhat related story - I was in a toystore the other week, and they had figurines based off the contemporary Charile’s Angels movies, and the one of Lucy Liu’s character is the same colour as the two white characters. *twitch*