Uh-oh. I’m contributing to the Barbie mania a little more. Sorry.
But this was interesting, and I hadn’t thought about it before! The Vagina Museum posted a thread about the long history of portrayals of the female genitalia, and I was surprised to realize that Greek sculpture did the same thing — Praxiteles was sculpting Aphrodite with a Barbie crotch in the 4th century BCE. It was a whole trend for centuries: male nudes get the anatomically correct treatment, while female nudes get a smooth featureless curve.
This says something about Western cultures different attitudes towards men and women. I wonder what effect this has had on women’s ideas about their bodies.
At least we took a step towards gender equality in 1961 when Mattel castrated Ken and made his crotch identical to that of Barbie.
What? I always thought Ken was, uh, anatomically incorrect from the very beginning. Huh. Something new learnt thanks.
Can only begin to imagine the uproar from the anti-woke reichwingers had they decided to do that today.. Mr Potatohead’s penis anyone?
Yes, capitalist America has taken equality into account when it comes to our species’ religion-inspired revulsion and hatred of sex and nudity.
Yes, capitalist America has taken equality into account when it comes to our species’ religion-inspired revulsion and hatred of sex and nudity.
Whoops! Sorry for the double-post.
Is there any way to see the thread if one does not have a twitturd account?
Replace twitter.com in the address with nitter.net to see the whole thread.
(how does one reply to a specific comment here?)
Stevko @6
By name and comment number.
I heard an old interview with the creator of Barbie on the radio yesterday. The interview was from the 1990s, I believe, so she was thinking way back from a point late in life. She claimed that she had wanted Ken to have genitals, but was overruled (the interview made it clear that, as one of the co-founders — with her husband — of Mattel in the 1950s, she was often overruled, or just ignored, even [especially?] by her husband.) The ‘bump’ Ken eventually got was the best she could do.
I believe it’s still like this in Japan where there is a whole penis festival but vulvas are blurred out in pornography.
Oh, speaking of Barbie crotches, Dave Rubin thinks the movie is going to confuse kids because a trans actress is playing a Barbie doctor. How this is going to confuse them isn’t really explained because unless the children transvestigate every woman they see and hear, they’re just going to see another woman playing another role. Is Rubin going to go from theater to theater shouting “THAT’S A MAN!” when she appears on screen?
Wait, what?
It is fashionable among certain types to shave down there. I gained no allies when I once pointed out that this may be the acting out of a fantasy to have sex with prepubescents.
@5
The Vagina Museum also posted the same information on their Mastodon account:
https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/110751631593707167
A ‘Barbie Crotch’ is nothing. Trailer Trash Greene’s stunt:
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is literally showing dick pics at our Oversight Hearing,” California congressman Robert Garcia tweeted.
I’m still amazed at how childish sooo many are with their fixation on sex, gender and women’s personal health rights. There are sooo many more important other things to deal with. WTF
(Of course, PZ is a biologist so this is part of his work?! Plastic naughty bits?!? /sarcasm?!)
Tabby @9
The blurring is gender neutral.
…Dave Rubin thinks the movie is going to confuse kids because a trans actress is playing a Barbie doctor. How this is going to confuse them isn’t really explained…
Rubin probably can’t explain that, because he’s the one who’s actually confused.
Oh, and kudos for the word “transvestigate!” Would a transvestigation lead to a transquisition? I hope no one tries to self-transvestigate my local pizza place…
I always figured it was as simple as not trusting males through time.
A sculptor makes a penis and most penis-lovers will simply giggle or take the art as is. Might get someone taking poses.
A sculptor makes a vagina and there’s a good chance some male out there might get drunk and actually try and fuck it!
Men are more juvenile usually, and thus they have to be careful.
I’m confident the satire versions of “Barbie” will have a field day with the Barbie/Ken anatomy.
Desi Lydic did an amusing take of the Barbie movie on the Daily Show in the last day or two taking humorous pot shots at its fantasy idealization of women…and men. But that’s just Hollyweird where nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about.
Tabby Lavalamp@#9:
I believe it’s still like this in Japan where there is a whole penis festival but vulvas are blurred out in pornography.
After the was, Douglas MacArthur was the military occupation dictator of Japan and took advantage of his position to ram a bunch of his christian ideas down their throats.
I gained no allies when I once pointed out that this may be the acting out of a fantasy to have sex with prepubescents.
Or, more practically, some of us have coughed our guts up on a curly hair lodged in our throats or caught one in our teeth. The “prepubescent” meme is pretty stupid if you actually think about it for a second. There are other reasons that might also make sense: it feels interesting, it’s a control/transformation fetish, your partner may have lice, etc. and before you poopoo that latter point, yes, in 1987, I had that experience.
I also happen to think women’s genitals look pretty neat. I’ve made dozens of life casts of those natural artforms and hair and alginate don’t go together.
Lastly, puberty changes the labia, in case you’re a completely ignorant chucklefuck you should know that. “Prepubescent” look cannot be achieved merely by shaving.
That implies that the “prepubescent look” they want is based on reality at all, rather than plastic fantasies.
Tabby Lavalamp @9
The (human) penises in JAV are also blurred out. Anuses, not being genitalia, usually are only blurred if something is being inserted inside them. None of this applies to animal genitalia… Perhaps I’ve revealed too much.
The film American Mary, about a woman who drops out of med school and becomes an underground surgeon in the extreme body modification community to pay the bills, features a woman who wants to become a living Barbie. Normal plastic surgeons were happy enough to do all the breast/lip/butt implants and liposuction, but they balked at giving her the Barbie crotch, so she came to Mary (Katharine Isabelle).
Massive trigger warning for the movie, by the way. It’s a movie about misogyny, both violent and internalized, and this necessarily means there are some really ugly scenes.
Let’s see an elderly Ken Doll with an inguinal hernia.
Barbie: ewww!
@StevoR #1
@feralboy12 #11
JSYK: 1961 was when the Ken doll was introduced.
Let us not forget the complete bs of the pioneer plaque floating around out there is space with that poor women and her Barbie bits proclaim to the first alien sources to discover it that women, in fact, do not have a vulva.
So THAT’S why everyone wants to see the movie – Barblie’s camel toe.
Raging Bee @16
I can’t take any credit for the word. It’s regularly used to describe the batshits who see trans people everywhere. Pretty much all of Hollywood is trans based on whatever minor difference in the shape or size of any part of the human body they think only exists on people they think are male or female.
@26. oddie :
Hmm.. FWIW
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque#Figures_of_a_man_and_a_woman
Of course, exactly what (so far hypothetical) aliens will make of that symbolic drawing is hard to tell and goes way beyond just the vulva there..
Personally I’d be more worried about them observing our changed planet and potentially assuming we are a heat & desert loving species who deliberately terrafromed our planet from its pre-Industruial climate into a hothouse mostly desert world.
@25. Chakat Firepaw : Ok, thx.
I received a message from VPT in the Sirius system: They are afraid that we want them to visit earth to be molested by humans and asked that we stop sending them pictures of nude humans with directions on how to get to earth.
(actually this wording was a recent comic)
StevoR @29
Considering our species evolved in tropics and much of the world’s population still lives there, that’s a safe assumption to make. We are a heat-loving species.
@ ^ Walter Solomon : Well, yes, but savannah grassland heat not desert extreme heat. Heat being relative term and all. When putative aliens watch our planet’s land areas change from green of jungle to yellow of sand and maybe some white of salt pans and think we love conditions like those in the Sahara more than we do conditions like those in the African Veldt. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veld )
What’s with the aliens and with the veldt?
Crotches, those are the subject.
The emasculation of Ken’s genitalia, and the elision of Barbie’s.
(No nipples either way, but)
@^ John Morales : Well, it is a bit off topic but then we don’t have to be totally monolithic about it here do we?
(7 mins long Space Odyssey 2001 opening scene)
You two are hilarious – like the Abbot and Costello of FtB.
Stevo: Let’s talk about space!
Morales: That’s off topic. This is about Barbie’s crotch.
Stevo: Okay, but here’s the opening scene of 2001!
X-D
@ ^ Silentbob : Actually this tangent started when someone (#@26. oddie ) mentioned Barbie’s crotch in spaaaace!
Specifically, the also anantomically under-detailed image of the genitalia on the Pioneer probe’s plaque.