Barbie vs. Bratz: The Death of Romance?

3.7.07

A recent billboard prompted me to think about this "metrosexual" phenomenon: the idea of men now taking extra care about their looks and fashion, not being gay, but attractive in a way that has been usually associated with women. The Gap ad featured 20-something's looking sweet and lanky, with long hair and quasi feminine features, slightly androgenous. I see these guys all around the neighborhood where I live and the Y, very hip and definitely heterosexual. Sexy but not threatening in any macho kind of way.

I have been thinking about gender roles since a few articles which have looked at teh career savvy Barbie being upstaged by the new doll Bratz who is all about fashion and accoutrements. Bratz are hyper feminine in their features and have no desire to be anything more than desired. They are all the rage with young girls these days. I then think of our pop idols, like Christine Aguillera, Britney, Jessica Simpson and how accentuated their female attributes are and I wonder if this isn't all a back lash to feminism.

I grew up with the 70's movement which put women in padded shoulder suits, corporate boardrooms and space shuttles. We were allowed, and expected, to join the male world and thrive. And we did. But we often did so by adopting male values and mannerisms and politics in order to compete and get ahead in our patriarchal society. So then comes Madonna and Victoria's Secret and Frederick's of Hollywood delivered to your front door.

And artificial insemination, men earning less than their wives, John Bly workshops. Male stars and superheros are no longer the strong silent John Wayne type, but the suave, sensitive kind. So I"m wondering if, with women in control of their reproduction and their paychecks and their remote controls, men are no longer serving teh purpose they used to in relationships? Have couples mutated into co-habiting economic units with traditional gender roles tossed aside in deference to whatever works to propagate teh species? If women can drive fork-lifts and men can nurse, then does it really matter how either dresses, who orgasms first, when the dishes get done and by whom?

Current fashion where I live stresses the reveal of feminine attributes with tight midriff revealing shirts, low slung hip hugging jeans, pelvis arching high heels, super pouty colagen enhanced lips and lots of floofy hair. Men on the other hand wear baggy everything, as if to hide whatever stuff they used to be made of. Women and girls look idealized whereas men look lost.

These fashion shifts coupled with our de-sensitization to sex in the media, in politics, in high school bathrooms, begs the question, whatever happened to dating, to romance, to nuance? it's so easy to hook-up, have friends with benefits, i-chat, text message, e-mail, or match.com one's way to relationship bliss, do we no longer need, or want, the reality of getting to know a person in teh flesh? When so much flesh is so easiliy and quickly revealed do we get distracted by desire or is it really cutting to the chase? Sex is, after all, the twin driver (to power) in all social interactions, so maybe we're just being "real" in this age of instant gratification under the shadow of potential global annihilation by terrorist of globally warmed terra cota landscapes.

I am reading The Well of Loneliness, written in the 1920's, about a young girl learning she is lesbian and how she struggles to find and keep true love. There are no details of her sexual exploration, as authors of that time would be banned for penning anything under a skirt. But the longing, the anguish, the confusion that comes with love and its passionate expression is so beautifully written; the story is timeless. And all the more erotic for what it does not describe.

So women expose more, erect poles in their garages for 'exercise', demand equal pay and sexual gratification and where are men these days? Getting pedicures and highlights and GQ. Is this a shift towards a more feminine society? Will feminine design ever take precedent in politics or will women continue to morph into male paradigms to keep their jobs? As we navigate new roles, can their be any mystery left between the sexes as we share bathrooms and sex manuals and Quicken accounts? With TV baring all, what's left to imagine as newly bonded couples, of any orientation, enter into marriage or unions of convenience? What purpose does romance serve when safe sex can get you where you really want to go, without the effort of dating? If women are as powerful as men, why do we still yearn for our knights on some base level? And why do our skate-boarding dudes still lech after the Britney look alikes.

Barbie had it all, looks, a job, kids and Ken. What do Bratz have? Chinese Laundry shoes, shiny slick lips and attitude. When I see a 50 year old Barbie in the locker room at the Y I feel proud. These truculent 20 year old, snide, sassy mouthed young babes with no manners leave me cold. I may envy their youthful bodies, but not their myopia. At mid-life, I wonder what they will have to be proud of that isn't silicon injected or credit-card purchased. Who will their Ken's be? And will there be anything left to explore, when they've all "been there, done that?"