Moschino Blows Away Gender Stereotypes

Recently, the high-end fashion brand Moschino garnered a lot of media praise after releasing a commercial for their Moschino Barbie Doll, which didn’t just include cute little girls in barrettes and pig tails, but featured something many of us had never seen for a Barbie commercial: A little boy. In fact, there were no girls in the commercial at all, breaking many barriers, comfort zones, and societal explanations of gender norms and stereotypes of dolls such as Barbie being for females only.

So exactly what does this mean for America, who just this year finally legalized the right for two people of the same sex to take vows and be viewed as legally married? Well, it’s extremely important for multiple reasons.

First of all, it sends a message to the world that there are role models to look up to. When I was growing up, I had a best friend who was a boy who’d ditch his GI Joe doll when he got to school and play with my Barbies instead. Five, ten years ago, young boys did not have a role model to look to who said if he wanted to play with Barbies, that was okay. For us girls, there was a different pressure when we didn’t want to play with Barbies (as I never did), with society finishing us up to be early housewives and gloat over the perfect man ‘Ken’, a beach house and a full-face of makeup everyday.

On the other end, I was the girl who always wanted to play football and basketball and baseball. I would see as other parents looked on with confusion in their faces that a girl wanted to play a tactile sport instead of sitting over in a corner playing with her Barbies and tea set. The Moschino commercial resonates with even (now) women like myself; toys are not gender specific anymore, and it’s time people stop pushing societal norms on their children. It’s a psychoanalytic thing, but if you continue to impregnate your child about what is right and what is wrong based on a toy, they come to then break themselves down in an effort to assimilate and rid off any wants of happiness that may be deemed ‘unnatural’. Thankfully, perhaps the conversation of dismantling gender stereotypes for everyone can start with Barbie.

Commercials like Moschino’s need to be seen, because you can not fit toys, or anything else for that matter, into categories separated by sex and sexual orientation. Those concepts are long thrown away, when young girls looked to Barbie to teach them how to be a housewife and GI Joe was instilled in boys to join the Army. Nowadays, we see more stay at home fathers, large margins of the population where the woman is the breadwinner, and even the co-ed military where all people are sacrificing their lives. Stop the crap and stop perpetuating lies.

I’m sure the backlash is of course strong for the case of Barbie, who has been a symbol of American identity for as long as she has been around. However, for young boys out there who want to play with Barbies (whether they are homosexual or not), now they know they can and it is not a war crime, it is not a damning piece of evidence, and it is no indication of the type of person they are in their heart. They see someone else doing it, and it gives them the strength and courage to do it too.

The Barbie commercial is just a small indication of the shift currently happening in society to break down and understand misunderstood gender stereotypes. It’s about time, in a day and age when civil rights for many groups of inequality are growing and the world has become more accepting now than ever of other lifestyles. Plus, it demands that ignorance be addressed and no longer skimmed over: A boy can play with Barbie and not be gay, a girl can play football and not be football. These are stereotypes that people continue to use to misdiagnose a simple child merely looking to have fun and express their individuality.

I will continue to watch that Moschino commercial and see the fun the boy is having with his doll, because perhaps if I watch his freedom long enough, we can all express our own one day.

Image: Getty Images