Photo:Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Issa Raeis reminiscing about the Barbie world that was her childhood.
“My Barbies were fulfilling scenarios,” the actress tells PEOPLE in the newBarbiespecial issueahead of the July 21 release ofGreta Gerwig’s big-screen adaptation of the iconic Mattel toys.
And yes, she adds, those scenarios involved making her plastic, fantastic dolls kiss: “They were also like sex-ed, when I didn’t know what sex was.”
“As a kid I just wanted to play and tell stories and make them kiss,” Rae remembers. “They were my opportunity to play God — Barbies were the Sims for me before I played the Sims.”
She also recalls being conscious, even as a child, of the “stigma associated with Barbie” and its depiction of femininity and race in American culture. “I felt like there was a lot of pressure, image-wise, playing with white Barbie dolls and my parents making sure I had Black Barbie dolls so I felt represented.
“Barbies made me aware of race at a young age,” says Rae. “There was so much held on Barbie’s shoulders.”
“I had a mom who was a little suspicious of Barbie, the way a lot of moms — in that generation especially, coming off of the ’60s — were,” remembers Gerwig. “But there were girls in the neighborhood who were a little bit older than me, who ended up giving me their Barbie dolls when they outgrew them.”
Her mother, she adds, “eventually did relent. I said to her, ‘There must be a Santa Claus, because you would never buy me a Barbie.’ I have a memory of playing with them alone, of creating stories with them alone.
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
“Actually it’s a little hard to describe what that state of play feels like as an adult,” Gerwig continues. “I can see my kids go into it, and it’s a very beautiful state. As you get older, sometimes you lose it. Maybe for me, writing is the way to connect back to that state.”
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“I wasn’t actually a hardcore Barbie girl,” Robbie reveals to PEOPLE. “I didn’t have my bedroom filled with Barbies. My sister must have had some but wouldn’t let me play with them. My cousin had a bunch.
“For me it was all about the Dreamhouse,” she says of Barbie’s interactive homes. “That’s what I had.”
Ferrera, who plays a real-world Mattel employee in the film, also remembers a cousin owning most of the Barbies she played with.
“Half of them were always naked and in the splits, for sure,” recalls the actress. “We cut their hair. I definitely had the experience of being a bored kid with a poor defenseless Barbie doll. And of course, if you had brothers or boy cousins, you knew that they were going to be defiled in some way.”
McKinnon a.k.a. “Weird Barbie,” meanwhile, was “more of a block person” as a child, she admits.
Don Arnold/WireImage
Rae, who plays “President Barbie,” tells PEOPLE that she crafted the character in close collaboration with her director.
“Greta picked my brain: ‘If this were the child version of you, how would she dress her President Barbie? How would her President Barbie act?’”
The presidential figure that resulted, says Rae, “is who my childhood version of a President would be. I think that she commands a lot of respect.
“But,” she adds, “that’s for you to judge.”
Warner Bros. will releaseBarbiein movie theaters July 21.PEOPLE’s specialBarbieissue is out now.
source: people.com
