Nobody should ever be shocked by what the fashion establishment gins up as the latest trend. Fashionistas are mercurial, novel seeking, often settling for the atrocious if it catches attention, confident their followers will get used to it in time. Still, this trend surprised me a little…
Welcome to ‘Barbiecore.’ The name gives it away: tailored miniskirts, bodycon silhouettes, matching clutches and reedy stick legs teetering on soaring heels. Also, satin, sequins, feathers, sparkles and pastel primaries—especially oversaturated magenta.
These are some of the places you can read about Barbiecore: Vogue, InStyle, Refinery29, Glamour, W, Fashion, CNN, Washington Post, USA Today, Daily Mail and Buzzfeed. #Barbiecore has 13 million views on TikTok and 22 billion on Instagram. According to Nylon magazine, Barbiecore ruled the Emmys…
Seems weird. After all those seasons of body positivity and inclusivity, blurred gender roles and counter-aesthetics like warcore, nerdcore, normcore, Ugly Chic and menocore (aka ‘#coastalgrandmother),’ we’ve apparently landed on Slutty Barbie.
I’m totally fine with it by the way. Barbie is nostalgic and nostalgia triggers dopamine. Barbiecore feels fresh, hyperfeminine and as hopelessly optimistic as Barbie herself. But these are not optimistic times. So why is this happening?
According to my stylist friend Jenna “it started in February when Pierpaulo Piccioli launched Pink PP Collection for Valentino and the fashion media went apeshit. Also, those stills from Greta Gerwig’s live-action Barbie movie coming out next summer…”
Glancing through 100+ images of Piccioli’s collection, I totally get all the hoopla. A princessy, gossamer fantasia of retro-glamour and romantic silhouettes, it made my pupils dilate. In these suffocatingly crappy times, it was like a Chanel No.5-scented breath of fresh air…
Hmm. Those rhinestones, bows and fluttery confections remind of something, but what? Ah yes… I know… this:
That is a snapshot of the Victoria’s Secret annual cavalcade of Angels—the sirens that steered Victoria’s Secret into household name and multi-billion dollar global brand.
Alas, Victoria’s Secret retired its Angels in 2021. Sales had been sagging and the company was desperate for a rebrand. CEO Leslie Wexner was connected to that disgusting pig Jeffrey Epstein and his company’s corporate environment was rumoured to be rife with misogyny. Above all, the aesthetic had not kept up with the times.
Enter a new leadership cabal consisting of gender equity campaigners and inclusivity advocates like Megan Rapinoe, Priyanka Chopra and trans model Valentina Sampaio. Good-bye celestial runway fairytale. Hello progressive values of body acceptance, gender fluidity and female empowerment.
It’s too soon to tell how this shift will go over. But seeing how Barbiecore has electrified the fashion press, I imagine Victoria’s Secret execs are feeling like this guy right about now…
CEO Martin Waters must be wondering to himself what were you thinking? As it turns out, ‘thinking’ may have been the problem. You can court the high status opinions of high-status influencers steeped in Gender Theory, but the great influencer of human behavior happens beneath the surface of consciousness.
It’s as though Victoria’s Secret was cornered by the cornerstone of modern biology: evolutionary theory. As thinking humans, we’re inclined to experiment with big ideas like body positivity and blurring gender boundaries, but humans have a tendency to revert back to their factory settings as mate seekers. Barbie’s physiology triggers man’s reptilian hotspots. That Barbiecore has caught fire suggests women still wish to trigger those hotspots.
Poor Victoria’s Secret. It tries to change with the times and then the times go and change. It’s not their fault. Nature always wins. Feminist moms have for decades tried to shield their daughter’s from the hegemony of a saccharine smiling fembot as a reference point for female beauty. They learned quickly that, despite all efforts to steer their girls away, Barbie always ruptured through the feminist superego. With slight embellishments, this is an otherwise actual exchange between a progressive-feminist mom and her toddler in the toy department at Target:
Child [***takes thumb out of mouth, points***]: “Barbie.”
Progressive-feminist Mom: “What about this cute gender neutral doll instead? ‘Zie’ celebrates positivity and kindness and comes in biodegradable packaging. Look! That’s the six colours of the Progress Pride flag printed in vegetal, non-volatile inks!”
Child [***still pointing***]: “Barbie.”
Feminist Mom: “Remember what we talked about? Barbie reinforces stereotypes of unachievable female beauty, which is both alienating and repressive.”
Child: “Barbie.”
Feminist Mom: “You know how mummy feels about pulverized plastic compounds leaching into the substrata of deep ocean beds?”
Child: “Barbie.”
(Pacifist Mom tried the same thing with boys and guns. Denied toy weapons, they turned any household object into a firearm.)
Child of Feminist Mom doesn’t want all the colours of Pride rainbow. She wants the three Ps—Princess, Pony and Pink. Pink is in her DNA. During the many thousands of years of pre-civilization in which humans evolved, attraction to reddish shades would have helped little gatherers easily spot a patch of strawberries in the scrub. Berries are high in vitamins, healthful colour pigments and polyphenols—all things to help Stone Age people avoid starving to death.
To those who insist the female affinity for pink is learned, you’re partly right. In modern times, marketing reinforces this ancestral impulse with a deluge of pink-positive images aimed at little girls, which their peer groups further reinforce.
“What’s wrong with pink anyway?” Jenna wonders. “It’s a happy colour. After World War II, Christian Dior’s hourglass dresses in dusty rose were an auspicious sign that history had turned the corner.” Having said that, this might be described as overkill…
Either way, evolution wins. It’s the ink stain that all the feminist theory in the world can’t wash out and shatters illusions of control. Coming up against thousands of years of natural selection, most things are out of our hands. Might as well give into your ancestral impulses and embrace the Barbie.
Pretties in Pink
Very smart. I love this: (Pacifist Mom tried the same thing with boys and guns. Denied toy weapons, they turned any household object into a firearm.)
It's not a soft pink. It's a very aggressive pink. Not saying that's a bad thing, but it is a thing.