Credit: Warner Bros.There’s less than a month left before the long-awaited Barbie movie finally struts into theaters, and that means that we’re finally hearing more from the stars about all the hard work, thought, and dedication that went into making the picture that some are saying will be the next Legally Blonde.
We probably don’t need to explain why Barbie is such a big deal: Almost everyone has played with a Barbie doll once. Even if you didn’t own them, someone in your childhood probably, at one point, thrust a doll into your hand and told you about your new character’s tragic backstory.
But acting out scenes in child-scripted soap operas isn’t the only thing kids use Barbie dolls for – as maker Mattel so often stresses, Barbie is meant to help kids express their imaginations in whatever way they see fit – and the thing about kids is, they can be really weird.
As such, in a recent interview, Barbies Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, and Margot Robbie were asked: “What was the weirdest thing you ever did with your Barbie dolls?”
Kate McKinnon and Issa Rae’s Barbies Were Exposed to Sexual Scenes and Graphic Depictions of Violence
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Kids may be using Barbies to act out dramatic scenes from their parent’s favorite shows or play pretend as doctors, lawyers, and grown-up jobs, but that’s not all. In case you were unaware, little kids often use Barbies to act out…other grown-up things too.
Kate McKinnon tried her best to discuss, with tact, the things that she and her sister and friends used to do with their Barbie dolls:
“I witnessed my sister and her friends do some stuff, with those Barbies, and I think we all did… it’s imagination, it’s a way of expressing your innermost desires, and things that you’re exploring about yourself and about the world – it’s a very good tool for children to have.
(We suspect there were some scissor-like shapes involved in those adventures.)
Before any non-parents freak out about this: It is perfectly normal behavior. A child using dolls to act out things like sex and romance is very healthy – it’s a sign that they’re learning to process these things as normal parts of being a person, which they are.
Issa Rae also described another activity that her unfortunate Barbie dolls were subjected to:
It was a tool of aggression too – like my sister had a My Size Barbie, and I don’t know what it was but because maybe it was like, close to our size, we f***ed that Barbie up!
Related: Margot Robbie Says Her Barbie Is Just Gal Gadot
Kids beating up their Barbies might be worrying to parents, but this is a perfectly healthy behavior as well – kids will inevitably become frustrated with other people as they grow older, and sometimes those emotions trigger violent instincts, which can be scary and hard to control for a kid who has never felt them before.
Redirecting that aggression toward a toy helps them process it in a way that doesn’t involve hitting another person. As long as the child knows that violence is wrong in real life, practicing violence on Barbie dolls is a perfect outlet – like Lilo putting her “friends” in a pickle jar to punish them in Lilo and Stitch.
Margot Robbie Thinks We’re ALL Being Weird About Barbie
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Producer and star Margot Robbie didn’t discuss any specifics of how she played with the dolls – mostly because she didn’t, as she testified in a previous interview – but she did think it was funny to note, during the film’s creation process, how weird that we as a society tend to be about how we play with the concept of Barbie.
Isn’t it so crazy – humans are just so weird. They made a doll, and then they got mad at the doll.
Robbie is referring to the inevitable backlash that Barbie faces as such a visible figure in our world. The fashion doll is constantly being criticized for how it is used to represent its very singular picture of what a woman is and does – even though those criticisms apply much more to us than they do to an inanimate piece of plastic.
We’re not going like “oh, here’s the things we should do better in the world,” we’re kinda like [angry pointing] “Mm! You’re doing this wrong and you’re doing this wrong and you’re doing this wrong!”
It’s a doll. It’s a plastic doll, and we made it! But it’s not our fault, it’s the doll’s fault.
What Robbie touches on here also happens to be, most likely, one of the very central themes of the film – that Barbie is much more than a doll. Barbie is a concept, an idea, and a cultural icon that has become inextricably tied to how we, as a society, view women as a whole.
Is she the whole picture? No, not by a long shot, but there’s no denying she’s a big piece of it. Because generations of girls have grown up playing with their Barbie dolls, living out their wishes, desires, and aggressions through them, in a way, many girls have grown up to be Barbie – the version of Barbie that they held in their minds.
Of course, all of this is just conjecture – we’ll know for sure what it’s all about when the Barbie movie finally premieres on July 21.
If you can’t wait that long, good news: There are some advanced screening tickets available for the Barbie movie in select cities, but there aren’t very many left, so if you want them, you should act fast.
What’s the weirdest way you used to play with your Barbie dolls? Leave your answer in the comments below.