“Meine Yiddische Barbie” as Feminist Parable

Some After-thoughts about “Meine Yiddische Barbie”

Peter A. Hempel

[Note: "Meine Yiddische Barbie" can be found in The Jump - Stories for Uncertain Times, or at https://www.redfez.net/fiction/jewish-meine-yiddische-barbie-876/99.]

At the risk of sounding like one of those tedious deconstructionists in a grad seminar, I have a few additional thoughts regarding “Meine Yiddishe Barbie.” Specifically regarding “Yiddishe Barbie” as a feminist parable.

First, as a side note, Esther as a character really doesn’t have much personality. Until I gave it some more thought, I didn’t really realize how very little personality she has. In part, she has taken on the role of being the “good girl” in the eyes of her family and her community. She is sweet, and she is studious. (She is one of those kids where if you were visiting her parents’ home and needed to make small talk with her, it would be a somewhat excruciating experience.)

Esther’s rebellion, which starts only later, begins with eating a non-kosher hot dog with her friends. [There’s obviously a sexual subtext to this choice of food as well.] And even later, at school, when things start to go downhill, she really doesn’t end up forging her own path, she simply falls in with the behavior of the other girls in her suite.

Again, this really isn’t about religion; it’s about a sense of culture. Although Jewishness (not religiosity) is important to her parents, the bar is not set particularly high – they tried to take her to services at least one or two Saturdays a month. I could easily see one Saturday a month as being more than satisfactory, and lapses of months at a time not being any big deal. They do want her to do the Bat Mitzvah, but that, in turn, is basically to “signify Esther’s own entrance into the world of Jewish tradition.”

Certainly, in Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities, belief and doctrine are taken very seriously. In the secular Jewish world, however, membership in the tribe is about a set of shared beliefs in the value of education and the importance of doing good (as with her lawyer father being described as a “mensch”).

Basically, this story is not about religion, rather it is a feminist parable. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pink-mini-skirted Barbie is not only the ultimate shiksa, she is the most loathed icon in the feminist dialectic. For Esther’s mother, Barbie’s shiksa-hood links her to the mindless and unintellectual culture of the goyim. For feminists, Barbie’s blonde hair, blue eyes, pink miniskirt, along with her long legs and attention-getting bust represents the total objectification of women – everything wrong with the way society urges women to be.

Barbie, of course, is innocent of all this controversy. She is confused, however, to find that all the things that everyone else seemed to like about her makes her an outcast in her new home.

The new outfit that Esther comes up with for her very much reflects the female dress code in the most conservative Jewish groups – where women in fact wear wigs over their own hair and dress with extreme modesty. But it is also the antidote for the hyper-sexualization of Barbie. We cover up her blonde hair, put on Mormon level un-sexy underwear, cover her long legs with dark, dull stockings, and add a very conservative jacket and a skirt that goes well below the knees.

Interestingly, Barbie’s reaction when she sees her new, transformed self is that she no longer feels “shallow” – “Sheila Barbie was someone to be taken seriously.”

Released from the stereotypes of her previous role, Sheila Barbie feels free and excited to take on the intellectual challenges of memorizing the language of the Torah and trying to make her way through the Yiddish that flies all around her. It’s the idea of being able to take yourself seriously, not anything about religion per se, that is the hallmark of her transformation.

She is similarly happy when Esther goes to NYU to continue her intellectual development. Being in Esther’s room, watching the students out on the street, she feels part of something important and intelligent.

When Esther begins to neglect her studies and instead hang out with the other girls (and then guys), this is a betrayal of the new identity that Barbie has come to appreciate and enjoy (and approve of). Unfortunately for Barbie, she has no power to change any of this, all she can do is look on in frustration.

Barbie is particularly appalled by all these boys hanging out (and not a yarmulke in the bunch). Is this a “religious” reaction? I think it speaks more to the betrayal of Barbie’s newfound feminist identity. Esther is starting to become what everyone always thought Barbie was.

Things come to a head, of course, when Esther starts bringing boys into her room. Barbie is appalled by this brazen behavior. Upright Barbie has become uptight Barbie – Debbie Downer – and Esther pops her into the underwear drawer. There, Barbie has to listen to the terrible sounds of what is going on. (By way of a side note, when Barbie wonders, “Are they shtupping?,” “shtupping” is not likely to be a word that Barbie would’ve picked up from the family parties at Esther’s parents’ home. Or maybe it is? Secular Jews aren’t necessarily all that uptight.)

It’s only later that Esther retrieves Barbie from the underwear drawer. She then takes the transformed Barbie, Sheila Barbie, and reverses everything about her transformation. She begins by removing all of the now modest Sheila Barbie’s clothes, even the underwear, leaving her lying there naked and humiliated. (Think the Mocking of Christ if you want.) She removes Barbie’s wig and her brown-eye stickers, and puts her back in her original pink miniskirt, white bikini panties, and high-heeled sandals.

This reversal, which under other circumstances might be seen as superficial, is a full undoing of Barbie’s intellectual transformation. When Esther brings in another boy (or is it the same one?), Barbie tries to recite some of the prayers she had learned, but they are already fading from her memory.

I don’t feel any need to be explicit about whether her final fall is a deliberate suicide or merely an accident (or even, potentially, the ironic result of the banging of the bed in the night). Barbie’s story is done. I suppose it could be viewed as a Flowers for Algernon story arc, but I see it as a deeply sensitive feminist look at a world that has no interest in allowing women to be seen seriously or to be taken seriously.

©Peter A Hempel, 2026

1065 words

Reading grade level – 10.4