The spectacular femininity of bimbos and 'Barbie'

The Barbie movie has arrived and we seem to be reaching peak Barbie-mania. But, Barbie's brand of hyperfeminine fun has been on the rise for years — especially online among left leaning femmes who call themselves bimbos and have been giving the term a new meaning.

Host Brittany Luse and Hannah McCann, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne who specializes in critical femininity studies, explore how both Barbie and real-life bimbos are criticized for being bad role models, and yet this carefree, maximalist, feminine style may actually be a little subversive.

The interview highlights below are adapted from an episode of It's Been A Minute. Follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for full interviews. These excerpts have been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

On reclaiming the term 'bimbo' and its new meaning

Brittany Luse: The meaning of bimbo has begun to change in the past few years. Talk to me about that.

Hannah McCann: In the 2020s, you have this change in the meaning of being a bimbo on social media where people are really working to reclaim the term "bimbo" specifically. You'll see on BimboTok on TikTok, people saying, "Yeah, I'm stupid, I've got nothing in my head, I'm a slut." And unlike the original stereotype of cisgender, white, blonde women, you see on BimboTok people identifying as queer, all different kind of ethnicities and identifying explicitly as left wing or often Marxist.

Brittany Luse: What is smart or what could be smart about having a "no thoughts head empty" approach to social critique — how does that work?

Hannah McCann: It's about not having to engage with people who are demanding that you prove yourself, or demanding that you can intellectually keep up with them or compete with them. That's why it's so jarring to patriarchal frameworks that insist you prove yourself and keep up in a way that is perfect and up to certain standards.

On the feminist tug-of-war over Barbie

Brittany Luse: Our OG bimbo, Ms. Barbie, is coming back. Barbie has been read as both [feminist and anti-feminist]. I am seeing people fight every day online about what she represents. What makes Barbie such a fraught icon of femininity?

Hannah McCann: She's fraught because she's seen to represent a model to which little girls should aspire, which is narrow. But on the other hand, there is this idea that Barbie has been every occupation and she can do anything. And so there's this feminist critique of Barbie as representing patriarchal femininity. And then there's feminist defense of Barbie as representing a Girlboss feminism. I hate both of those. She's not just this floating signifier that tells us how to look. It's about how people play with Barbie. [For example,] I had two Barbies and a Ken: Ken was gay and the Barbies were a butch and a femme... You can project onto Barbie, to me that is more interesting than just saying that she's a problematic icon or she's some fantastic icon.

The spectacular femininities of bimbos and Barbies

Brittany Luse: Barbie is not just feminine, she's hyperfeminine, spectacularly feminine. What does that mean?

Hannah McCann: Yeah, there's this really fantastic concept coming out of critical femininity studies called spectacular femininity. So, for example, Maya Padan's done this work on the Spice Girls [about] how their aesthetic is actually so spectacular that it connects with this reading of them as drag. And this is an interesting [question about] what is drag, and who is in drag, and what do we count as subversive. It's a much more dynamic way of understanding what's going into that presentation, rather than just saying, "oh, no, they're dupes of the patriarchy, too."

Brittany Luse: ... It really takes their gender as a performance.

Hannah McCann: Exactly. There was an interesting show that I analyzed a few years ago out of the U.K. called Snog, Marry, Avoid. And they would take these women off the streets who, according to the show, were wearing too much makeup. And the whole point of this show is to give them a "makeunder."

It's interesting that so much feminist analysis has focused on makeover shows as super problematic and reinforcing patriarchal standards, but when you transpose that onto a makeunder show, you actually see how spectacular femininity is quite uncomfortable, unnatural and disruptive for people.

Brittany Luse: That's funny because [even the] title is based upon marriage as the ultimate goal. You could be just enjoying yourself, wearing 6 pounds of makeup on your face every day. But then it's like, "do you want to get married?"

Hannah McCann: And that's what I think bimbo aesthetics are about, too. It's actually so exaggerated and over the top that if you're put on Snog, Marry, Avoid, people would be saying they'd avoid you.

Brittany Luse: Yeah. One of the things that I have noticed, in all of the Barbie promotion that has been put out there is that spectacularly feminine aesthetics of the film, the pink dream houses and the super pink, campy outfits are not necessarily appealing to men. That's not who the film is even being marketed to, it's meant to appeal to people who really enjoy the performance, the theatricality and the sense of fun within those spectacularly feminine aesthetics.

This episode was produced by Barton Girdwood, Alexis Williams, Liam McBain and Corey Antonio Rose. It was edited by Jessica Placzek. We had engineering from Josh Newell. Our executive producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sangweni and our senior VP of programming is Anya Grundmann.