Barbie in Pakistan: The Toy, the Movie, and the Cultural Ambiguities
/This post is part of a themed series on toys that asked contributors to think about a toy/toys/toy company and explore how various cultures, groups, audiences, or companies find and make meaning (or money) through such play. The theme is purposefully open-ended, meant to be fun, and published throughout December to coincide with the holiday season.
In Pakistan, Barbie the movie transcended its form as mere cinematic spectacle and metamorphosed into a tool through which the complex, unspoken, and ambiguous scales of morality can be analyzed. My recent research[1] on the reception of this globally successful movie examines the responses of its Pakistani viewers to show the complex national landscape of reactions that went far beyond simple movie criticism. The movie elicited responses from the viewers that helped to explore the ambivalence around the almost desperate attempts to construct a national identity, gender dynamics, and social expectations in an increasingly regressive society. After its release, the movie was banned in the largest province, Punjab, which furthered the urban debates on it. It became a powerful site of anti-fandom, where the critics of Barbiestrategically deployed cultural rejection as a form of social capital. By denouncing the movie as “westernized bullshit,” these anti-fans constructed a performative narrative of cultural authenticity, using their critique as a means of social positioning and symbolic boundary-making between the Muslim “us” and the non-Muslims in the West as “them.” The anti-fandom was a form of cultural resistance, which allowed the viewers to establish a sense of moral superiority and a strong religious group identity. I sorted the collected responses in three categories: nationalism, religious sensibilities, and women’s empowerment, with each category reflecting a coded performance of belonging within Pakistan’s intricate postcolonial social hierarchies.
For the Pakistani viewers, the movie optics were inextricably linked with the world-famous Barbie doll, which was released in the United States in 1959, with the theme tune “Barbie You're Beautiful.” Over the previous four decades, the eleven and a half-inch doll has sparked controversies, affection, and criticism, but it has maintained its global popularity. Barbie, the most popular fashion doll, has been banned in numerous nations for a variety of reasons, including violating the Islamic dress code (Saudi Arabia) and encouraging consumerism (Russia). Still, the American doll unlocked the secret to success in toy world and infiltrated the global market with its fantastic merchandise of dream house, clothes, makeup, kitchenware, and a never-ending assortment of school supplies. An overwhelming majority of little girls and young women like and appreciate Barbie for her magnetic charm and beauty. Barbie, who resembles a fully developed and breathtakingly beautiful woman, embodies independence, charm, and financial affluence. Toy props such as dolls, automobiles, and building blocks are highly useful in helping children imagine real-world events in which they may one day participate. Barbie has long been chastised for promoting unrealistic and largely white-washed beauty standards.
The Barbie doll has been a part of the Pakistani toy scene since the 1980s, when it first gained visibility in upscale, elite toy-stores and reached the upper-middle-class households as a coveted gift item from overseas relatives. Now, Barbie is available all over the country, and the quality of plastic used in its manufacturing determines the price. The good quality of bendable plastic and of the accessories means that it has been imported into the country, hence expensive. Barbies made with low quality plastic and few or no accessories are usually made locally and are priced lower. Regardless of the quality, the doll is still received with reservation in most traditional patriarchal Pakistani households because its womanly shape and its Western wardrobe often comes into direct clash with popular Islamic ideals of modesty. Fewer number of families, usually in highly educated urban communities, object to Barbie because it shows a non-diverse vision of perfect-beauty for women. One of my colleagues, who refused to get a Barbie for her daughter, said that she does not want her child to grow up thinking that “only skinny women with flawless skin are beautiful.” Regardless of the reservations, the Barbie doll is still favoured by the majority of young girl children in Pakistan, whether they are buying it from the mall or from the local vendors selling it on cycles.
For decades, Barbie has been a subtle yet potent symbol of Western cultural influence. In urban Pakistani homes, the doll exists in a liminal space, simultaneously coveted and controversial. Children are drawn to her glamorous aesthetic, while parents negotiate the boundaries between cultural preservation and global connectivity. The 2023 movie amplified these existing dynamics, thus enabling deeper conversations about identity, westernization, and cultural authenticity. The anti-fans denounced Barbie for its content that was against their culture while simultaneously struggling to articulate what “culture” actually meant for them. This ambiguity is deeply rooted in Pakistan’s colonial history because of which national identity remains a contested terrain, intertwining with broader claims of Muslim belonging that transcend national boundaries.
The anti-fans’ critique of women’s empowerment highlighted the narrow national interpretation of liberation that insists upon circumscribing women’s independence by Islamic values and a perceived ideology of Western intrusion. Respondents in my study often supported their arguments with imagined scenarios—such as references to sexual affairs—that were entirely absent from the film itself, demonstrating how anti-fandom operates as a performative social event that extends far beyond the actual text.
The most significant part of the research for me is the exploration of the complex ways in which women’s agency in Pakistan is undermined, deconstructed, and refined in everyday life. We are part of a society that ostensibly supports female education while simultaneously constructing elaborate, nebulous restrictions on women’s social behavior. Interestingly, this cultural ambiguity was most pronounced in urban centers, spaces with a more progressive outlook, which shows that patriarchal constraints are not simply imposed from above, but actively reproduced through deep social structures of cultural gatekeeping.
[1] Farooqui, Javaria. “From a toy to a tool: the reception of Barbie and cultural ambiguity in contemporary Pakistan.” Feminist Theory (2024): 14647001241291394.
Biography
Javaria Farooqui is Assistant Professor of English and Literary Studies at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, Pakistan. She received her doctorate in English (society and culture) from the University of Tasmania. Her research focuses on postcolonial literature, popular romance studies, book history, and women’s history. Her monograph Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency (2024) offers the first major study of English-speaking romance fandom in South Asia.
