Little girls throwing away their baby dolls, smashing them, the instant there is anything else to play with than a toy baby and anything else to play at being than a mother. It's a generational moral panic older than Barbie. Teddy Roosevelt abhorred "teddy bears" for same reason

The idea is that stuffed animals, or fashion dolls, or *any* vessel for affection and imaginative play that is not training a girl to be a wife to a man and a mother to sons is "unnatural" and an assault on her value to a man's family line. That's why they hate Barbie.

This is also a root cause of hating on grown women with pets. Caring for an animal is a "cheat code". Men are supposed to be the gatekeepers of family, doling out access to tiny cuddly dependent creatures in exchange for a woman's supply of sex, to perpetuate the next generation.

Coming back to this thread to say that the human core of the movie is a story about a mother and a daughter who bonded over the evil civilization-ending fashion doll, and whose family became stronger twice over because of her.

There's a lot of misogyny that that can get wrapped up in messaging of "women can be more than mothers" because there's a lot of misogyny lying around, but the existential threat that has conservatives up in arms isn't real.

And the people who are saying that telling little girls they can grow up to be anything is a dangerous and evil message (for fear that it will keep them from becoming mothers) also devalue, demean, and diminish motherhood themselves on a regular basis.

None of the Barbies are mothers; Barbie The Exemplar is not a mother and that is one of the few things a woman can be that she explicitly isn't. Pregnant Midge was in the movie not just an Easter egg to weird Barbie history. She underscored this point: Barbie isn't a mother.

But as the movie points out: the mother of Barbie was a mother when she made Barbie, and she made Barbie for her daughter. There's no conflict or contradiction between the existence of motherhood and the existence of a woman who is not a mother.

Two commenters overnight took exception to my statement about Theodore Roosevelt's animus towards teddy bears (and also reminded me that he did not call himself "Teddy"; it was a familiarity forced onto him very much against his will). I think I may have oversimplified too much.

Two statements I will stand by: 1. Theodore Roosevelt was concerned with what we today would call "The Great Replacement" and what was then often called, in all seriousness, "race suicide". 2. Teddy bears were a flashpoint at the time for that nonsense.

When looking for a source to back up my recollection, I realized I was conflating a statement by Roosevelt: "Willful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death." with...

...statements made in the pulpits and the papers of the time, by others and not Roosevelt, that warned that letting little girls play with teddy bears or other cuddly non-human toys would "kill maternal instinct" and lead to "race suicide".

To circle this back to the point: that obviously hasn't happened. Girls have been playing games beyond Let's Practice Raising His Sons (And Other Men's Future Wives) since time immemorial, and motherhood still happens. The next generation of humanity has happened, every time.

The idea that Girls Become Mothers is a natural feature of the human condition protected and powered by instincts is at odds with the lengths to which conservatives go to destroy or diminish all other possible options or outcomes.

And it's more "grooming logic", by which I mean, it's the same type of thinking that holds it so essential that children are socially indoctrinated into one of two specific roles for adulthood that even letting them know "Hey, there's more to humanity than this." is "grooming"

All of which is to say that conservatives... the "thought leaders" among them, at least... aren't *pretending* to be incandescent with rage about this movie, aren't *pretending* they think it's an existential threat. The rage and fear are real, even if the cause is nonsense.

The first scene is very much their version of "They're saying the quiet part loud!"/"Oh My God He Admit It Dot Gif" for Great Replacement Theorists and race war enthusiasts. They perceive it as a shot fired, not a warning shot across the bow but directly at the powder magazine.

The actual *point* of the scene, of Barbie, is that it is not in any way necessary or helpful or good to force little girls to dream of being Mothers And Mothers Alone. They will dream of motherhood anyway. And other things anyway. We can and should show children the world.

We can and should show children the world. We can and should give children the world. And if you want to talk about things that can actually break the unbroken line of "this generation begets and births and raises the next generation", for humanity or any constructed "race"...

...then we should be talking about fossil fuels and car culture and gas stoves and climate change and pandemic control and unchecked corporate capitalism and all the things that the same conservatives do their best to turn into third rails.

The Mad Daily Wire Lads and the rest are trying to treat the next generation of humanity (what humanity they recognize) like a pair of recalcitrant pandas in a zoo who must be forced to mate for their own good, while they set fire to the zoo and prevent anyone from putting it out

The real-life version of "national death" that Theodore Roosevelt so greatly feared is playing out in front of our eyes day after day, not just nationally but globally, and it's got absolutely nothing to do with who is boinking whom in what orifice or legal relationship status.

Most little girls who played with Barbie dolls (or teddy bears, or video games, or a beloved family pet) growing up, grew up to be mothers. Most of them who did or did not become mothers, would have done the same either way.

Even if humanity had nothing resembling "maternal instinct" or "mating instincts" but everything else about our society were the same, no girl would need a special toy made to tell her that she may/will grow up to become a mother.

Our society does need stories that tell us we -- any of us, all of us -- might grow up to be a scientist or a leader or a teacher or a healer or an athlete or a performer. That stuff isn't baked in to biology in anything near the way some aspects of parenthood are.

And there is no conflict between those socially constructed roles and biological reproduction or the socially constructed roles of parenthood. They aren't exclusive. They aren't either/or. Treating them like they are means that humanity loses out, on parents and on potential.

Barbie doesn't explicitly need to say "You could be the president of the United States and also a mother!" The last four words of that message are taken care of. Nothing is gained by having Barbie take time out of Barbie to chant those words along with the crowd.

The fact that Girl ➡️Mother is such a sanctified and sanctioned and protected and reinforced part of our society that Barbie saying "Girls Can Be Anything Else" is seen as an attack on something sacred is why Barbie doesn't have to say "Girl Become Mother", and shouldn't.

But of course, this is another layer on the right-wing backlash: it's not enough for their message to be allowed to be spoken, it's not enough for their message to be hegemonic and dominant in the marketplace of ideas. They need everyone else to say it, all the time, every time.

I'm going to end the thread here, for now. As I've tweeted elseweb today, I'm working on moving more of my content (non-fiction like this thread included) to Patreon. As the birb site continues to degrade, I suggest following me there to ensure access.