Barbie is a Muse in our Patriarchal World - Part TWO
In Part ONE I shared how Barbie represents a rather contradictory idea, one that can be divisive, and how cis het white men benefit the most from this division.
Here in Part TWO, I explore what we can (continue to) do collectively to keep moving the needle forward. I share how I healed my lack mentality and why I identify as Sustainable Barbie. I’m also sharing a concept that helped me show up as my most authentic best version next level self, in hopes that it will help you too.
In sharing some of my own experiences (as a cisgendered queer white woman) along with the powerful insights gleamed from them, my hope is to inspire more people to move forward into their truest self, and to find connection in a world determined to keep us separated from each other.
To heal, things need to be worked through, the obstacle is the way after all.
I want to be clear, this is NOT about smashing the patriarchy, and all the connected systems that feed off the same model. Nor is it about brushing things under the rug and moving on as if it doesn’t exist. It is about finding and filling the gaps we as humans need to thrive, while also finding new and more beneficial ways to connect with one another.
It is about being human, and how Barbie is a Muse.
I’ll start with sharing my own example of healing lack mentality and how that allowed me to show up authentically me.
💃🏼 I am incredibly creative, intuitive and an eternal optimist.
💃🏼 I am strong, courageous and secure in my being.
💃🏼 I am authentic, unique and an inspiration to others.
💃🏼 I am super f’n resourceful, determined and implacable.
💃🏼 I am introspective AF and give space for my emotions without letting them take over and run the show.
💃🏼 I am a human first, with a strong spirit and a lot of love.
These words didn’t always come easily to me.
As someone who grew up learning an insecure avoidant/dismissive attachment style…
I had incredibly low self esteem and generally avoided people and kept to myself because I thought nobody liked me. At the same time I was told how beautiful, pretty and attractive I was, which (contrary to popular belief) did not help my self-esteem. While my ego appreciated the compliment, this became a filter through which I viewed the world, one that made me immediately weary of people who acknowledged my beauty first, as if they wanted something from me, without acknowledging my full humanity. Whether it was true or not, their compliments told me they didn’t see the whole of me, they just saw my looks, something that has always been celebrated quickly and easily in society.
It felt… shallow.
It took me a lifetime of self exploration and intentional development to find myself and believe in my strengths to be able to say them out loud. As many of you know, it is a journey that does not end but keeps getting more profound. There are many layers to our being, and the more we allow ourselves to be ourselves the more we are able to allow those layers to unfold for others to see.
Allowing our authentic selves to be visible is no easy task.
It is much easier to mask. It is much easier to avoid the deeper issue, to become fervently independent, at least on the outside. When I finally let my walls down, I realized all I ever really wanted was deep unconditional love. Unconditional love teaches us to receive first, to let love in, and I did that by loving myself unconditionally first.
Unconditional love is the pathway where I learned to heal my lack mentality. It is where I wake up to my truest self with a warm embrace, over and over again.
It wasn’t until I started healing my lack mentality that I was able to own the strengths it gave me.
My lack mentality went hand in hand with learning to become avoidant/dismissive, thanks to the patriarchal systems at play. I grew up ‘poor’, born of a single teenage mom, and ‘we don’t have any money’ was one of the most common things I heard. I learned to stop asking for what I needed, instead I become resourceful, independent and strong. These are strengths I learned to survive, strengths that helped me avoid, in a world that was not made for me. I also became determined, determined to get away from the limiting world I grew up in and evolve into the shimmering version of myself I always knew was possible.
Strength - I am resourceful
Like many other designers and makers today, my Barbie dresses were made from scraps of fabrics and threads. My Nan taught me how to sew, knit and crochet at an early age, providing me with an abundance of skills that I then carried forth into my 20+ years in fashion, design and making clothes. She taught me to prevent waste and use all the things available to me. I still very much do this today, for full sized humans. My studio is full of found fabrics and leftovers I use up. You can even view an entire collection I created from ‘found fabrics’ for SS22 Eco Fashion Week HERE (scroll down) or directly on YouTube HERE.
Strength - I am independent
Perhaps because of Barbie’s influence in my early years, I grew up believing that I could do and be anything. My mom also made a point of reminding me on a regular basis that I could do anything I set my mind to, which may be why I enjoyed playing with Barbie and making clothes for her in the first place. Barbie believes that anything is possible for a woman in the world today, and so do I. It was really difficult at times, going through Breast Cancer treatment taught me how to ask for and receive help, that I don’t need to do everything on my own and that it is ok to let others in. I now know that it is ok to be me and to keep blazing my own trail.
Strength - I am strong
People can say shit, things can happen, adversity comes my way and I swear it just makes me stronger. Not having my needs met at a young age taught me I needed to make the people around me happy in order to feel safe. As a recovering people pleaser, I have learned that not everyone will like me, because truly that’s impossible. Once I admitted that I also don’t like everyone, the people I love became more precious to me and everything else became background noise. When you come from lack mentality it is in finding that inner strength that will help you find your deeper purpose, because it will keep you going against all odds. An inner strength comes from knowing yourself and standing in that knowing unapologetically, for yourself before anyone else.
Why I identify as Sustainable Barbie.
When it came to Barbie, I had very few, moderately priced Barbies that I took excellent care of. I took excellent care of my Barbie’s hair and shoes, and I made new clothes for them out of scraps of fabric, embroidery threads and yarns that my Nan gave me. I made them new clothes through means of up-cycling.
Up-cycling is one of the most effective tools of living a sustainable life. To up-cycle is to create something new and of higher value than the parts it was made from. Along my path in life, I have taken my broken bits and pieced them together with gold, like the Japanese art kintsugi. My journey through life has resulted in a ‘product of higher value than the original’ and I have given myself a reason to live (ikigai), a purpose for living is fundamental to living a sustainable life.
I am Sustainable Barbie.
When it comes to fashion, in true sustainable style I was fashionably late to the party. When I saw everyone rushing to buy something pink to wear to the Barbie movie, it turned me off, big time! Not only did I have nothing pink in my wardrobe, I had ZERO interest in buying something new. A few months later, when my friend was cleaning out her parents house, she asked me if I wanted her vintage 90’s prom dress? Yes yes yes!!! With a fresh wash and the addition of a corset back and halter straps I made it fit. I styled it with a white tee and silver platform sneakers to add a casual element to this otherwise otherworldly piece.
Not something I would normally wear, I revelled in the ability to up-cycle the ‘pretty in pink’ vintage prom dress and give it another day on display.
Are you a Barbie girl? Are you Kenough?
While I loved making clothes for and dressing my Barbie’s, I was never a plastic fantastic kinda person. The more poplar narratives of Barbie never made much of an impression on me because I never cared for popular narratives to begin with. I’m not super slim, I’m not a fan of Botox and I have a preference for short hair.
NOTE: one of the main problems the fashion industry is facing today are the plastics that so much of our clothing is being made of. Not only is it less healthy for our bodies, micro plastics are being circulated back into our water supplies and there are giant islands of plastic floating in our oceans. Plastics are required for certain clothing to be functional, another important factor in creating sustainable products such as swimwear, nylon tights and footwear. There is no one answer other than to take a fully holistic lens when looking at the world of plastics.
With Barbie, I’m speaking more to the contradiction she creates in the minds of women around the world (which is addressed at the beginning of the movie). I saw it all unfolding before my very eyes, the euro centric beauty standard modelled so perfectly by Barbie. I was the kid who watched repetitive Saturday morning commercials with a bit of side eye, not knowing what to say about it. Despite not having the words to speak up, I saw through the facade from an early age, a lot of us Gen X’ers did.
To keep collectively moving the needle forward, it is imperative we find our most authentic representation of self. Barbie is one of many muses, if she resonates with you, I encourage you to run with it. As an independent woman who can do anything she puts her mind to, including breaking out of the box, she makes for a great muse.
Today, many women are stuck wearing their ‘man suit’, while many men are faced with blandness.
The ‘man suit’ is a term originally coined by Harriet B. Braiker in her 1986 book The Type E* Woman: How to Overcome the Stress of Being Everything to Everyone. This concept was brought to my attention by Cindy Bachop of Boom Spiral Facilitation.
From my understanding, the man suit is the ‘suit’ women put on to look and play the part of the man in today’s world. Much like the masks we put up, it is a way to fit in and be accepted, adopting the behaviours of men instead of leading through our own knowing. It is the equivalent of Ken wearing a dress because that’s what he thought Barbie expected him to wear, not because he wanted to.
When we wear what truly reflects us and who we are, we are wearing something that suits us. It no longer comes from some preconceived notion based on some outdated idea from some bullsh*t standard that simply doesn’t work for everyone.
Wear the suit that reflects your best self.
Much like Barbie, sometimes we are given a suit (uniforms). More often, we get comfortable in a ‘suit’ we have deemed appropriate, something that simply works without putting too much thought into it. Barbie has many suits because she can do anything, and she needs a suit for all the different things she does. There’s nothing wrong with that but it does serve us to look at things a bit differently.
Our ‘suit’ is often overly influenced by the external world and our need for validation. At least I have seen (and experienced) this time and time again.
Think about it this way… The last time you started a new job, what did you do to figure out what to wear to work? Did you do some online research, talk to friends, ask the hiring manager? Did you check the dress code written out in the employee handbook? Maybe you even hired an expert to help you out. Whatever route you took, I can almost guarantee those first several days at work you were looking around at your colleagues to see what they were wearing, and to see how you stacked up.
What tends to happen over time is we start to develop a ‘uniform’, dressing more like the people we are around, in an attempt to ‘fit in’. I know because I did it so many times myself.
To better serve our next level best version of self, our ‘suit’ needs to be more influenced by who we are and what we truly want to represent in the world. When we don’t expand beyond the external expectations (usually for fear of standing out for all the wrong reasons) it keeps us trapped in a suit that simply reflects a title and does not do our most authentic selves justice.
It takes courage to put your true ‘suit’ on.
Our best suit is something that suits us, pun intended. It also requires a holistic view of our title or role and our situation or workplace. Our best suit forward is something that works for who we are at our core AND how and where we move around the world. The biggest bonus? When us humans know who we are and stop running on auto pilot, we stop buying sh*t we don’t need, and start buying things we love and feel great in. When we slow our roll, we stop perpetuating the narrative the fashion industry works so hard to keep us in, which in turn creates behaviours that better protect the planet and the people in it.
After all, the most sustainable item of clothing is the one in your wardrobe.
Let’s be honest, knowing who we are and how to best represent that can be difficult, especially in a world that constantly tells us to conform and be something we are not, in a world that does not feel safe to be our most authentic self. If Barbie told Ken what to wear, do and say, because his very livelihood depended on it, how do you think Ken would feel? A bit limited no?
This has been the experience of women throughout history.
My mission in business is multi-fold and keeps evolving. One of the most important factors that keeps me doing the work I do is to help people see just how amazing and beautiful and powerful they truly are. Not just once, I want people to see this everyday when they look in the mirror. It’s a process for your experience of self to be transformed over time. I want you to succeed at seeing and accepting yourself more fully, so you can create and live a life you love filled with happiness and abundance.
It’s only natural to wear a ‘suit’ that reflects who you are at your core, knowing what ‘suit’ to wear starts by looking within.
I hope you have enjoyed the visual story that accommodates this post. The ‘suit’ you see in these photos is a one of a kind piece up-cycled by me, and these photos express my deeply emotional self while showing the inner fire that lights my way. The outfit is now a permanent piece in the wardrobe at Mateus Studios in Port Coquitlam, BC, where these photos were taken by the incredibly talented Michele Mateus.