There were girls at school who’d made my life a bit miserable, but suddenly there they were, in the bedroom with the two slim single beds and the candlewick bedspreads that I shared with my sister. They were my new best friends. I had a Barbie and they were buying in. It was transactional. But I was 6. And I liked this new warmth. I wanted buy-in too. If it took Barbie to make this happen, I was here for it.
Later I got a Ken doll that wasn’t bendy but made of inferior material: hard plastic in a deep orange, like a bad Trump spray tan.
Eventually, we left that town. I would’ve packed up all her clothes and accessory handbags and tennis racket and weird white sandals and would later move on from her.
I have not yet seen the Barbie film, but the colossal marketing campaign around the feminist power-message has me a little cynical — because I know what a transactional collab looks and feels like. I was 6 but not stupid. But I pinky promise that when I do, I will be open-hearted, and I know I will laugh.
But when everyone has buy-in, and you’re not the one sticking your neck out, it’s easy to join the wagon. This week we lost a true feminist who was so maligned, one who had so much to say, before anyone else had the guts to. She took on that most sacred of institutions — the Catholic Church — which, up to that point had been largely untouchable. She represented rebellion and liberation.
As an obit in the New York Times says, “she was an integral part of the renegotiation of old stereotypes of gender, sexuality, rebellion and liberation that is still going on today”.
Sinead O’Connor did not want to be defined as pretty. A woman who fit the male gaze. She had something to say. She talked about sex abuse, equality and the folly of war. But the world wasn’t ready to hear it from a woman who shaved her head, and it turned on her. Perhaps it is ready now.
