Life in plastic? It's fantastic – until Barbie gets a diagnosis
I've had my fair share of 'helpful advice' when it comes to managing my own disease, Addison's, and since my diagnosis five years ago I've felt an affinity with those who live with type 1 diabetes. The two diseases share similarities. First, they're both autoimmune conditions, where antibodies develop and target healthy tissue as if it were a threat. And just as those with type 1 diabetes require insulin supplementation throughout the day for survival, I require the same, but with cortisol – an essential, life-sustaining hormone which my adrenal glands no longer produce.
Life with disability or chronic illness can be utterly exhausting. For example, like insulin, one of my life-sustaining medications needs to be refrigerated, and on a trip overseas, I asked the airport hotel to put the gel packs from my cooling device in their freezer overnight ready for a full day of flying the following morning. They proceeded to misplace one of them, leaving me with a now-defective medication storage unit before I'd even touched down in Singapore.
And that's just the start. Friend and disability advocate Zoe Simmons recently spoke out about her experiences of wheelchair damage while on our country's flagship airline, Qantas.
Perfunctory as this new Barbie may be when it comes to improving the lives of those with chronic illness, representation matters. It just does.
For better or worse (probably worse, let's be honest) I was a card-carrying Barbie obsessive as a kid. She came with me on sleepovers, she got married and divorced more times that I can count, and she joined me every night at bath time for a good scrub-down. That lanky, questionably proportioned doll meant a lot to my seven-year-old self, and I have little doubt that she holds the same position in the bedrooms and bathtubs of millions of little kids today.
Since this new Barbie's release, everyone with lived experience of chronic illness who I have spoken with (even long-time Barbie-haters) have all expressed a kind of catharsis and hopefulness at the thought of children with these conditions feeling less alone. Loz, my friend with type 1 diabetes told me, 'At 34 I've never been more excited in my life, for a toy!'
The fact is we have a strong and enduring fixation with placing blame on the chronically ill for their predicament. We have a dodgy track record, yes, but we're not stuck on this path. Visibility is progress, and a company as big as Mattel acknowledging that is a big bloody deal.
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