What would have happened if my parents had banned Barbie dolls

Broadsheet discusses parents forbidding their children from owning Barbie dolls.

I had dozens of Barbie dolls - either 27 or 37, I forget which. I liked them because they let me be a girl (in that playing with dolls is a girly thing to do) and they let me role-play at being at the fun parts of being a grown-up woman (dressing up in grownup clothes and heels and, later, having sex.) I'm sure my parents weren't too thrilled with this. They tended to discourage girly things, and I'm sure they didn't want their kids coveting fancy clothes or role-playing sex. However, they did not ban Barbie from our house, which is a good thing because if they had it would have been far worse for my self-image.

You see, as I've mentioned before, I'm very femme mentally but don't look very feminine physically - especially not when I was a pre-pubescent child. I've always been bigger than average for my age, I have a big nose (just like my father's) and a heavy brow (just like my father) and unattractive dark skin around my eyes (which I'd never seen on another person when I was a child). I'm clumsy and awkward and say and do the wrong thing (just like my father). My feet are enormous and rather ugly (just like my father's). My body hair has always been black and more copious than average (just like my father's). I was the first person in my class (male or female) to be able to grow a mustache and the only person (male or female) at the Grade 5 pool party with hairy armpits. When my hair was short people mistook me for a boy all the time, which is why I now wear my hair hip-length.

My parents often tried to discourage me from girly things and point me more towards boy things. I don't know why exactly this is - I don't have a brother so I have no idea which parts of their child-rearing were about raising girls and which parts were about raising children - but I suspect a lot of it had to do with because being girly is less convenient. A kid who doesn't care about clothes is easier to shop for than one who wants to be a pretty pretty princess (and I was especially complicated because I wanted to be a pretty princess but had no idea what kinds of clothes I wanted to accomplish that and hate the process of shopping.) A kid who wants to dig in the garden is more useful than one who runs away screaming "EWWWW! Worms!!!!" It's easier to get everyone off to school on time when no one feels the need to do their hair and put on make-up than when you have two kids wearing a total of five kinds of foundation between them.

However, because I was already wanting to express and present as far more feminine than I was capable of, whenever my parents tried to discourage me from something girly or encouraged me towards something more boyish, I felt like they were saying I don't get to be girly because I'm not pretty enough, and should just be a boy instead. I was nowhere near capable of expressing this at the time, but that's how I felt. They said "You can't wear a skirt because you'll be running around," I heard "You aren't girly enough to dress like a girl, so you may as well just act like a noisy smelly running-around boy." (This is back when boys were yucky.) They made me help my father with home improvements or join him on a bike ride, I heard "You're practically a boy anyway, so you have to keep your father company with his boy stuff." (And to add insult to injury, when my sister didn't have to do this stuff (in retrospect probably because she was too young) I felt like it was because she's prettier and looks more like a girl so she doesn't have to do the yucky boy stuff.) So if they had forbidden Barbie dolls, I would have taken it as "You're not pretty enough to play with these pretty things like all the other girls."

I did like some boy toys and boy activities too. I like legos and trains and science fiction and video games and dodgeball and Ninja Turtles. But these were never a source of conflict. I could do them, I like them, people never tried to stop me, they never made people think I was a boy. It didn't feel like gender expression, it just felt like doing stuff I liked. I don't like them because they're masculine (or even despite the fact that they're masculine), I like them because I like them. But with girly toys, there was always an aspect of gender expression there. I guess it's similar to how if I like a dress it's partly because it makes me look feminine, but if I like running shoes it's because they're nice running shoes.

Now I did (and probably still do) have body image issues, but that had nothing to do with the Barbie dolls. For example, the thing I hate most is the dark skin around my eyes, but that's because I never saw anything similar on anyone else ever except cartoon portrayals of evil. (I have seen it on other people since, but no one who was around when I was a kid had anything like it.) I hate how my stomach sticks out no matter what because my waist is so short there's nowhere else for my guts to go, but that's more from cultural disdain for fat rather than anything to do with Barbie specifically. I'd still have that even if I'd never met a Barbie doll.

But mostly Barbie's figure was irrelevant because I was pre-pubescent when I was playing with her, and she represented a grown-up woman. I did aspire to be a grown-up woman one day, but I certainly didn't want to be one yet. My Barbie play was just forward-looking role-play for one day when I was a proper grownup with breasts and heels and lipstick. I didn't have big breasts or mile-long legs when I was playing with Barbie, but that's fine because I didn't want them yet. I wanted to be a pretty little girl, not a sexy grown-up woman. And by the time I had matured enough physically that I had a woman's body and matured enough mentally that I wanted a woman's body (i.e. in the now instead of in the indefinite future), Barbie was irrelevant. When I wasn't getting laid, the other girls around me who were getting laid were relevant (what does she have that I don't?) and when I was getting laid they were irrelevant too because I was quite clearly sexy enough.

All banning Barbies would have done was make me feel more like I wasn't good enough for girly stuff when I was a child. So it's a good thing my parents didn't.

Edited to add: I started out just writing this as an anecdote, but I think I have a broader conclusion. A lot of the time when parents don't want their kids to have Barbies, it's really that they don't want them to want Barbies, or to want what she stands for. But if the kid already wants Barbies (or whatever else the parents are trying to ban), banning the thing isn't going to stop them from wanting it. So when parents are inclined to forbid something, they should first think about whether what they really want is for the kid not to have the thing, or just not to want it.