Barbie Girl

Gender equality is an international human right – but is it a reality? UN Women was founded in 2010 to accelerate progress in achieving international gender equality. Their key goals are empowering women, reducing economic and political disparities and reducing violence against women and girls.1 But the organisation’s findings are stark. Globally, women earn 20% less than men; only 25% of all national parliamentarians are female; and at least 35% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence.(1) Reading these statistics prompted me to reflect on what it’s like to be a woman at this moment in time.


At this moment in time, Barbie the movie(2) has just been released to (mostly) critical acclaim across Europe and the US. It is promoted as a movie about a living doll that suffers an existential crisis, exploring matters of life and death, relationships, feminism and patriarchy through glorious – mostly pink – technicolour, sunshine, song and dance. Sounds like harmless fun and potentially a commendable way to provoke conversations about gender equality, right? Not everyone agrees. Barbie has been banned in several countries for reasons including: the promotion of feminist ideologies that demean men (Saudi Arabia), objectionable LGBTQ+ content (Pakistan), promoting homosexuality, sexual deviance and transsexuality (Lebanon) violating Islamic values (UAE), damaging moral standards (Algeria) and inaccurate portrayal of geographical maritime borders (Vietnam).(3) So, not fun, not harmless and not commendable.


According to Greta Gerwig, the movie’s director, young girls are funny, brash, confident and play with Barbies, and then they suddenly abandon their confidence along with their dolls.(4) Anyone who has been [or seen] a girl maturing into a young woman knows this is a stereotypical and reductionist description of development. I wonder how valuable Barbie – the doll – is as a ‘source of enrichment’ and as a model of womanhood, when she is eternally adolescent, has unrealistic (and potentially unhealthy) proportions, is sexless, and can seemingly turn her hand to any number of careers at the flick of a debit card, no training required.


Barbie is a toy, not a human, and for me the blurring of this boundary blurs the line between fantasy and reality. This can be harmful when the target demographic of Barbie the movie is young women and girls, in particular (the movie is rated PG13). Barbie is a brand, and, at this moment in time, the Western world is in the clutches of Barbie-mania, or, as publicists would have it, ‘Barbie-core’. This is also aimed at women and girls who are being enticed to buy into the fantasy with Barbie shoes, Barbie clothes, Barbie sportswear, Barbie haircare, Barbie toiletries, Barbie jewellery, Barbie sex toys, Barbie home accessories and even Barbie snacks.


We are also being bombarded with yet more unrealistic, reductionist, stereotypical, culturally biased images of what a woman looks like in the form of Margot Robbie, the white, blond-haired, blue-eyed actress who plays the leading role. She has model proportions – reportedly 34–24–34 – and a ‘snatched’ jawline – reportedly the ‘perfect’ 125 degrees. Most women and girls do not and cannot match these statistics, but many will try, through restricted eating, skin lightening, hair bleaching or surgery. And when they still don’t ‘measure up’, their confidence will plummet.


I have read that Barbie is a ‘commentary on what it’s like to be a woman in the ‘real world’.(5) The reality is that at this moment in time women are still judged on their appearance and sexuality, are still the victims of economic and political disparities, are still likely to experience cultural and age biases, and are still more likely than men to experience physical and sexual violence. I don’t think that Barbie is doing much to change that.


References:


  1. Gender Equality. www.un.org/en/global-issues/genderequality#:~:text=The%20United%20Nations%20and%20women&text=Among%20the%20purposes%20of%20the,%2C%20language%2C%20or%20religion (accessed August 2023).
  2. Barbie. www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268/ (accessed August 2023).
  3. Barbie: Which countries have banned the movie?https://uk.news.yahoo.com/barbiemoviebanlis100541130.htmguccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHilWlmnpk_EFd6VZewfkHMvk6eyEZ5k4lexjW19kClehBfx4t85ceGK4-10zvbwzyQctqSiG-Ulkkv4aDuz6Dwh-MqHkmoUJ7C4OtEzLWaq-fIF8QPZ7pI5Ag7ZBbILrPBKSGr5S_NCMkhnbiy6l5VD4yDQlLzghgjDaZjhJWd-(accessed August 2023).
  4. Barbiemania! www.vogue.com/article/margot-robbie-barbiesummer-cover-2023-interview (accessed August 2023).
  5. Grazia View. Grazia. 8 August 2023.


Biography


Jeanine Connor is a psychodynamic psychotherapist who works in private practice, mostly with adolescents and young adults. She is also a clinical supervisor and training facilitator. Jeanine has supported young people, and those who work with young people, in a variety of settings for 25+ years. Jeanine is the author of two books about psychotherapy – Stop F*cking Nodding and other things 16 year olds say in therapy (PCCS Books, 2022) and Reflective Practice in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: Listening to Young People (Routledge, 2020). She is in the process of writing a third, which will be published in 2024. Jeanine is the editor of BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) Children, Young People & Families journal and reviews and edits for BACP Therapy Today.


Website: www.seapsychotherapy.co.uk

X: @Jeanine_Connor

Books: Stop F*cking Nodding www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/stop-fcking-nodding

Reflective Practice in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy www.routledge.com/Reflective-Practice-in-Child-and-Adolescent-Psychotherapy-Listening-to/Connor/p/book/9780367149406


This article first appeared in Engage 27.

BY JEANINE CONNOR • April 8, 2024

In Harmony With Peace Concert

By Ann Beatty • June 1, 2026
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here