Recently, a trip to the cinema feels as if you are inside of a Pepto-Bismol bottle. Every “Barbie” movie goer is decked out in pink attire. In Romania where I am, things were a little more eccentric. I saw from pink cowboy hats, to hip-hugging Barbie logoed thongs. On the virtual side of things, on Instagram I saw Barbie inspired pasta dishes (some used beetroot and feta to achieve a pink sauce), Barbie inspired cocktails, endless makeup tutorials and girlfriends being overly excited in general in their little 30-second videos/reels.
This movie for so many of us, including myself, ignites a strong sense of nostalgia. It represents an era of a beauty idealisation pre-internet era when the beauty standard was just thin, white and dressing in figure-shaping clothing religiously. The dolls we played with and the stories we told ourselves when we played with them, placed so many of us in an imaginary world where we narrowed our views of beauty. Looking back, I believe it was probably one of the symbols that helped shape my early beliefs that good hair was meant to look at least straight, if not straight and blonde. Barbie, even though imaginary, gave us from a very young age, a symbol to strive for. And the closer you were to it, it seemed, the easier things were for you.
