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The Star
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
Angles of empowerment: How Barbie's careers are related to the slant of her feet
There's a scene from the 2023 movie Barbie in which arched feet step out of high heels onto the ground. And stay arched. It took actress Margot Robbie eight takes to perfect the trick and it set off a social media frenzy almost akin to a collective gasp. For a group of podiatrists in Melbourne, Australia, that scene became fodder for a group chat – the angle of that arch, the weight on the balls of her feet. When Barbie's heels eventually touched the ground, those podiatrists saw the beginnings of a research paper. 'We were talking about how nice it was to finally see Barbie in flat shoes and to see Barbie making all of these different shoe choices based on what she had to do in her day,' Cylie Williams, an academic podiatrist at Monash University, said in a phone interview. It seemed, to the group of researchers, that Barbie's empowerment was tied to the structure of her feet, in the same way that everything about Barbie – her body shape, her skin colour, her lifestyle choices – are tied to the Everywoman. 'We went, 'Do you reckon that's actually a thing?'' Williams said. 'And we are researchers – we're curious – so we kind of went, 'Let's have a look at this, this could be fun.'' 'Just so we're clear,' she added, 'we are serious researchers.' Their curiosity has culminated in a new peer-reviewed study, published recently, that examines the correlation between Barbie's foot posture and her social standing. It also examines, amusingly enough, the reputation of high heels in society. Williams and two other podiatrists, including a male colleague, Ian Griffiths, who refers to himself as the 'diversity hire' of the group, teamed up with their friend – an occupational therapist, Suzanne Wakefield, who happens to be a lifelong Barbie collector with a personal collection of about 800 dolls. In the movie, Barbie's arched feet step out of high heels onto the ground and stay arched. — Handout Feet through a revolution Together, they examined the feet of 2,750 dolls that were produced from 1959 to 2024. They measured each doll against a metric they had devised: foot posture (flat or arched?), equity (diversity of the doll), employment (is she a fashion girl or a working girl?) and time (the release year). Yes, the metric spells FEET. 'I would like to say something really smart about that but, you know, it was Friday night, we were texting each other going, 'We need to make something up that we can audit,'' Williams said. When they came up with FEET, 'we couldn't have high-fived each other harder if I tried.' The researchers found that, over time, Barbie's feet did indeed go through a revolution. In the early decades of Barbie's life, 100% of the dolls had arched feet. In the past four years, only 40% did. 'Employed' dolls were far more likely to have flat feet, while fashion-focused ones were more likely to have the extreme arch. The researchers reiterated, in the interview and in their paper, that this evidence did not determine cause-and-effect and, in order to maintain scientific independence, they did not contact Mattel to find out if the design decision had been intentional. In a statement emailed to The New York Times, Mattel confirmed that foot design was indeed a deliberate part of Barbie's evolution 'with reimagined footwear options to support Barbie's bold steps forward.' 'Barbie's leisure choices have expanded,' Wakefield said, sitting in front of her Barbie calendar, clutching her Barbie mug. 'She was originally designed as a fashion doll and so, if you look at a lot of her choices of leisure, it was going to the opera, or it was having tea parties or going to a ball. Now we see Barbie going skiing. I've got scuba diving Barbie – she does a whole lot of other things that are not high heel-oriented at all.' Williams says while high heels can be painful, they can also be fun and joyful expressions of personality. — Freepik Rejection of the footwear As women entered the paid workforce, high heels landed at the centre of 'ongoing, never resolved questions of feminism,' said Andi Zeisler, the author of We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl To Cover Girl, The Buying And Selling Of A Political Movement. They have been perceived simultaneously as objects that sexualised women, particularly in male-dominated spaces, and as symbols of power that 'telegraphed a sense of purpose and control.' They have been, over the decades, abandoned by feminists, then reclaimed, then scapegoated by health professionals as the root of all the joint aches that ail women, lending a sheen of science to the rejection of the footwear. While high heels can be painful, they can also be fun and joyful expressions of personality that do not, in Williams' eyes, deserve the negative medical attention. There is no conclusive evidence demonstrating that these shoes cause the common aches and pains associated with them, Williams said, and women should be free to choose which footwear suits each situation they find themselves in, as Barbie does. 'Health care professionals need to shut up a little bit more,' she said. And she offered some advice: 'If you want to wear high heels, wear high heels.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Is Barbie's Empowerment Tied to the Angle of Her Feet?
There's a scene from the 2023 movie 'Barbie' in which arched feet step out of high heels onto the ground. And stay arched. It took the actress Margot Robbie eight takes to perfect the trick and it set off a social media frenzy almost akin to a collective gasp. For a group of podiatrists in Melbourne, Australia, that scene became fodder for a group chat — the angle of that arch, the weight on the balls of her feet. When Barbie's heels eventually touched the ground, those podiatrists saw the beginnings of a research paper. 'We were talking about how nice it was to finally see Barbie in flat shoes and to see Barbie making all of these different shoe choices based on what she had to do in her day,' Cylie Williams, an academic podiatrist at Monash University, said in a phone interview. It seemed, to the group of researchers, that Barbie's empowerment was tied to the structure of her feet, in the same way that everything about Barbie — her body shape, her skin color, her lifestyle choices — are tied to the Everywoman. 'We went, 'Do you reckon that's actually a thing?'' Dr. Williams said. 'And we are researchers — we're curious — so we kind of went, 'Let's have a look at this, this could be fun.'' 'Just so we're clear,' she added, 'we are serious researchers.' Their curiosity has culminated in a new peer-reviewed study, published on Wednesday, that examines the correlation between Barbie's foot posture and her social standing. It also examines, amusingly enough, the reputation of high heels in society. Dr. Williams and two other podiatrists, including a male colleague, Ian Griffiths, who refers to himself as the 'diversity hire' of the group, teamed up with their friend — an occupational therapist, Suzanne Wakefield, who happens to be a lifelong Barbie collector with a personal collection of about 800 dolls. Together, they examined the feet of 2,750 dolls that were produced from 1959 to 2024. They measured each doll against a metric they had devised: foot posture (flat or arched?), equity (diversity of the doll), employment (is she a fashion girl or a working girl?) and time (the release year). Yes, the metric spells F.E.E.T. 'I would like to say something really smart about that but, you know, it was Friday night, we were texting each other going, 'We need to make something up that we can audit,'' Dr. Williams said. When they came up with F.E.E.T., 'we couldn't have high-fived each other harder if I tried.' The researchers found that, over time, Barbie's feet did indeed go through a revolution. In the early decades of Barbie's life, 100 percent of the dolls had arched feet. In the last four years, only 40 percent did. 'Employed' dolls were far more likely to have flat feet, while fashion-focused ones were more likely to have the extreme arch. The researchers reiterated, in the interview and in their paper, that this evidence did not determine cause-and-effect and, in order to maintain scientific independence, they did not contact Mattel to find out if the design decision had been intentional. In a statement emailed to The New York Times, Mattel confirmed that foot design was indeed a deliberate part of Barbie's evolution 'with reimagined footwear options to support Barbie's bold steps forward.' 'Barbie's leisure choices have expanded,' Ms. Wakefield said, sitting in front of her Barbie calendar, clutching her Barbie mug. 'She was originally designed as a fashion doll and so, if you look at a lot of her choices of leisure, it was going to the opera, or it was having tea parties or going to a ball. Now we see Barbie going skiing. I've got scuba diving Barbie — she does a whole lot of other things that are not high heel-oriented at all.' As women entered the paid work force, high heels landed at the center of 'ongoing, never resolved questions of feminism,' said Andi Zeisler, the author of 'We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Cover Girl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement.' They have been perceived simultaneously as objects that sexualized women, particularly in male-dominated spaces, and as symbols of power that 'telegraphed a sense of purpose and control.' They have been, over the decades, abandoned by feminists, then reclaimed, then scapegoated by health professionals as the root of all the joint aches that ail women, lending a sheen of science to the rejection of the footwear. While high heels can be painful, they can also be fun and joyful expressions of personality that do not, in Dr. Williams's eyes, deserve the negative medical attention. There is no conclusive evidence demonstrating that these shoes cause the common aches and pains associated with them, Dr. Williams said, and women should be free to choose which footwear suits each situation they find themselves in, as Barbie does. 'Health care professionals need to shut up a little bit more,' she said. And she offered some advice: 'If you want to wear high heels, wear high heels.'
New York Times
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Practicing for When the Bombs Fall in ‘A Knock on the Roof'
There comes a point late in 'A Knock on the Roof,' a new solo play about ordinary people under bombardment in Gaza, when the boundary blurs unsettlingly and the audience can no longer tell: Is Mariam, the central character, awake or asleep? Are we watching a horrifying reality or a fear that's taking shape in her dreams? Her everyday existence is fraught enough. Portrayed with easy approachability by Khawla Ibraheem, who is also the playwright, Mariam spends her days wrangling Nour, her 6-year-old son, and meticulously planning how she would escape her apartment building if the Israeli Defense Forces attacked it. 'You see,' she tells us in narrator mode, 'two wars ago, they started using a technique called 'a knock on the roof.' It's a small bomb they drop to alert us that we have five to 15 minutes to evacuate before the actual rocket destroys the building.' So Mariam trains to run as far as possible in five minutes, weighed down by whatever necessities she can put in a backpack — plus Nour, a heavy sleeper who will need to be carried if the bombs come at night. She puts him through practice-run paces alongside her mother, who moves in when the unnamed war begins, not because it's safer but just to be with them. Directed by Oliver Butler at New York Theater Workshop, 'A Knock on the Roof' long predates the current war between Israel and Hamas. As a program note explains, the play began as a 10-minute monologue that Ibraheem, who lives in the Golan Heights, wrote in 2014. Much of its further development came in the year before the conflict erupted in October 2023. The immediacy of the current war is what makes this production, which moves to London in February, so timely. Surprisingly, that does not necessarily give it a dramatic advantage. Part of the show's tonal challenge comes from trying to balance comic absurdity with undeniable darkness. Part stems from the banality of ordinary life, still to a great extent unremarkable even when wrenched and mangled by war. The destruction that looms and threatens is as yet, for Mariam and her family, at bay. To the audience, Mariam is friendly and relatable, addressing us directly, nudging us to imagine ourselves in her shoes. How many pairs of underwear would we pack if we had to flee? How far can we run in five minutes? (A voice from the crowd at the performance I saw: 'I can't run at all.') Even as Mariam's anxiety escalates, she maintains her facade. 'I act normal,' she says. This is a motif. But the play, which seems to waver between fleshing Mariam out and letting her remain an Everywoman, doesn't allow us to know her very well. An eventual cluster of details about her relationship with her husband, who is abroad studying for a master's degree, feels inorganic. For the most part, Ibraheem keeps the play's focus tight on Mariam, her mother and sweet, mischievous Nour; when it opens wider to take in the city around them, it gains a welcome heft. Butler, returning to the theater where he had such great success with 'What the Constitution Means to Me,' tries to encourage a connection between actor and spectators by seating some of the crowd onstage and leaving the lights up on the audience for a good chunk of the show. Both elements feel like obstacles to our immersion in Mariam's life. (The minimal set is by Frank J Oliva, lighting by Oona Curley.) 'A Knock on the Roof' wants to draw us close and deepen our understanding. I'm not sure it succeeds at that. But we do leave knowing that Mariam, whether awake or asleep, has been trapped inside a nightmare all along.
