Adios Barbie was the name of a book about pop culture's ideas of beauty. Then it was the name of a website featuring articles on that topic.
In the past articles posted at AdiosBarbie.com showed up in my blog feed. In recent years, format changes have caused these articles not to show up in the blog feed. The site is now formatted to feed into e-mail. Don't bother adding this site to your blog feed if you want to follow it.
Anyway, this site invites first-person articles from lots of different women on the general theme of how we relate to pop culture's ideas of beauty. The quality of these articles naturally varies. I've liked some of them, not liked others. Generally I agree with the overall idea that we should try to keep our bodies healthy and let that optimize our looks, rather than worrying too much about who likes our look or prefers a different look.
How far should advertisers go in the direction of celebrating good health and self-esteem, rather than always looking for models who look like the images that were in the news recently--Sydney Sweeney, Candace Owens, et al.? Ideology isn't always helpful. What we see in a picture does not always communicate itself to less informed eyes.
In the 1990s when hand-knitted sweaters were the height of fashion, I put together a portfolio of satisfied customers modelling things I'd knitted. It showed the diversity of age, size, gender, and color that is found among my close friends and relatives. They were all pretty or handsome in different ways. And then there was a cousin who was in her forties at the time. Her sister had been in some of my classes at school. Both of them had beautiful faces. I thought of them in biblical terms, a Rachel-type and a Leah-type. "Leah" (not to be confused with a younger relative whose actual real-world name was Leah) was more interesting, at the time; Rachel had gone into baby-making mode. Leah had cerebral palsy. She wore thick corrective glasses, and her face had a habit of twitching into alarming grimaces that made no emotional sense. I was used to Leah, liked her, and thought her photo modelling her hand-knitted sweater was excellent; it showed one of her versions of a smile. But nobody else ever came to that picture and said, intelligently, "Oh, that's a satisfied customer who has cerebral palsy." They said, "Oh, my." They said, "Oh, dear."
I thought any intelligent person ought to be able to accept Leah not only as a model but as a friend, a hostess, a church lady, a writer, a teacher...but a lot of people who knew our parents, and us, never really were. They said they couldn't afford to make more buildings more wheelchair-friendly. They didn't say that they also didn't know what to say or do, and felt panicky, in the presence of an intelligent person whose facial expressions and tone of voice really were "crazy." And I could hardly say while Leah was living, "Look, I'm phobic about people who have autism or dementia or schizophrenia too. The fact that I like this woman ought to tell you that all she has is cerebral palsy. Relax! Include her! On an equal basis, except of course when someone needs to help load the wheelchair in and out of cars."
I didn't want to take Leah's photo out of my portfolio...but when I got a good-quality photo of my boyfriend doing a lot for his hand-knitted sweater, I did. The portfolio looked more effective all right, one conventionally attractive smile after another, no smiles distorted by spastic facial muscles. Urk.
That's the sort of thing people lament at AdiosBarbie.com. If you want to stretch your consciousness of how other people cope with social life as an unannounced beauty contest, that site may help. If you think that that kind of stories have served their purpose and people really need to be reminded that there's nothing wrong with looking like, or looking at, Sydney Sweeney...well, that's where your head's at. Cheers. I think there are too many stories on the theme of "Why don't more people celebrate how healthy and pretty I feel about being only 40 pounds overweight, when I used to be 140 pounds overweight," myself. Then I note that thought as an indication that I need more reminders about this particular kind of eye-judgment.
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