Barbie says you can be whatever you want when you grow up — even transgender. Just in time for Pride Month, Mattel has debuted a doll modeled after Laverne Cox, transgender actor and 2014 “Glamour” magazine Woman of the Year.
“I hope all the kids who are feeling stigmatized when their healthcare is being jeopardized, their ability to play in sports, I hope they can see this Barbie and have a sense of hope and possibility,” Cox said about the new Barbie on NBC’s “Today”.
Barbie’s target market has traditionally been girls from ages three to 12. Though, as each successive generation has matured more quickly and, therefore, at a younger age, Barbie’s targeted age group has shrunk to three- to six-year-olds. You could argue that the audience for a Laverne Cox doll is more of an older crowd, willing to spring for a $40 collector’s item, but that’s not what Cox thinks.
“Representation matters,” the actor said of this brave new Barbie. Cox claimed that over 250 pieces of “anti-transgender” legislation have been introduced all over the country this year, “targeting transgender children” and “LGBTQ youth.” Most likely, Cox’s remarks reference an NBC report which stated that over 240 pieces of anti-LGBT legislation were introduced this year, about half of them “targeting transgender people specifically.”
These include bills that allow talented female athletes to remain competitive, keep the opposite gender out of the wrong bathroom, and prevent minors from making the life-altering decision to take puberty blockers or have their growing bodies surgically altered. As is usually the case with the Left, an alarming buzzword (“anti-transgender”) couches a commonsense policy (not letting impressionable children pump themselves full of hormones before they’re old enough to vote or drink).
This kind of rhetoric may play well with liberal viewers, but a majority of Americans don’t want their children wading through this gender ideology. A poll from earlier this year found that half of Americans wouldn’t want their kindergarten through third graders learning about sexual orientation and transgenderism, supporting Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education Bill” — dishonestly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by the Left.
None of that matters to Cox, or Mattel, who are now in the business of preaching to six-year-olds that they can be whoever they want to be when they grow up — even a different gender.
“Laverne uses her voice to amplify the message of moving beyond societal expectations to live more authentically,” Mattel said in its announcement of its first transgender Barbie. “Laverne embodies the values of the Tribute Collection, and we’re thrilled to make her a part of it.”
Unfortunately, Mattel is just following the market. They’re predicting that having a transgender Barbie will be worth the woke points they gain, despite the customers they may lose. It’s the same gamble that led to the production of their Uno Pride edition (as if the cards weren’t already multicolored enough) as well as Fisher-Price’s little drag queen figures, which are marketed to toddlers.
The left-wing Williams Institute, which studies sexual orientation and policy, estimated that “1.4% of youth ages 13 to 17, about 300,000 youth, would identify as transgender.” While this number is certainly larger than it was just a few years ago, for transgenderism in pop culture is seriously on the rise, this number still represents a tiny fraction of young people in the U.S. Yet, transgenderism is becoming “trendy,” as even one transgender psychologist put it.
Psychologist Erica Anderson recently expressed concerns about the uptick in children identifying as transgender. “Giving over to hormones on demand will result in many more cases of poor outcomes and many more disappointed kids and parents who somehow came to believe that giving kids hormones would cure their other psychological problems,” Anderson said. “It won’t.”
While the mainstream medical establishment has, like the White House, fully embraced the fictional idea that gender transitioning and social support will cure children’s psychological distress, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
One study reanalyzed raw data from a study concluding that transgender children with parental support have minimal mental differences from their peers. This new study determined that “transgender children, even when supported by their parents, had significantly lower average scores on anxiety and self-worth.”
“Our findings,” the authors concluded, “should serve as a warning against accepting research at a surface level, which can lead to acceptance of invalid information and pursuit of ineffective interventions.”
Even worse, a new report from the Heritage Foundation found that the claims that early access to puberty blockers decreases suicide rates among transgender youth are likely inaccurate. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Jay Greene told the Daily Wire that “when the evidence is examined properly, it shows that making cross-sex treatments more widely available risks raising youth suicide rates rather than reducing them.”
Not to mention the proportion of transgender children who later choose to de-transition, an act considered taboo by progressives and one that they would prefer to ignore altogether.
Ultimately, Mattel isn’t marketing to some large faction of transgender children. At best, it’s marketing to parents who want to feel progressive when they buy their kids toys that represent the leftist cause of the day. At worst, it’s targeting parents who push their children to “explore their gender identity” or, as Mattel puts it, move “beyond societal expectations.” It is both responding to and pushing the boundaries of the culture.
This is a culture that preaches that any deviation from a gender norm — rather than breaking stereotypes, as the old liberals would have argued — now means you probably ought to change your gender entirely. Cox said this new transgender Barbie is important because the actor’s mother didn’t want Cox to play with Barbies as a child.
Just as Caitlyn Jenner’s famous “Vanity Fair” cover was accompanied by an interview in which Jenner gushed about being able to talk “about hair and makeup,” transgender activists continue to have a woefully shallow view of womanhood. If being a woman is just about playing with certain toys or looking a certain way, then of course anyone can be a woman. The biological reality, of course, nullifies transgender activists’ ideas of a woman and womanhood.
Barbie has never been the best at female empowerment. According to a 2015 Time Magazine article, the dolls were modeled after a sexy gag gift in Germany. Barbie has, however, contributed to the culture in some good ways, such as modeling various careers for women and even releasing Barbie dolls with different body types. It seems, however, that Barbie, the billion-dollar behemoth, has now hitched its wagon to the transgender train.
Nothing will convince Mattel to stop but a massive drop in profits. When enough people protest with their wallets, maybe companies will realize their transgender gamble isn’t so popular after all.