from Barbie Chang
— Nix Thérèse
Since her inception, Barbie has been a conduit for our childhood dreams. Her myriad number of variations and professions aim to show us her versatility, but more importantly, her relatability. But she’s not entirely a blank canvas since she’s deeply American, and this is what brings conflict to Victoria Chang’s Barbie Chang series (set to be published by Copper Canyon later this year) in general, with the icon used to interrogate the American Dream and the goal of assimilation.
In ‘Barbie Chang’s Mother Made Her,’ I love how the emotional conflict of not being accepted by her peers becomes tangible: “Barbie Chang is hopeful / hippingly so to be / included in the Circle smiling with a / mouthful of bees that / look from afar like braces.” Yet even though the speaker’s anxiety has now become a physical ailment, she’s masked enough so onlookers might not notice. Putting on a brave face is something that femmes know maybe too well. In the larger context of Barbie, she’s always publicly presentable, but who knows what’s hiding behind her teeth? These subtle moves force us to see the icon in a different light, to take in more of her than just the surface.
Chang also creates these staggering lines that run into the next, creating a kind of forward momentum that matches the anxiety of the speaker and the conflict at large: “there / is war even here there is terror land to / grab people to claim / millions of bodies rushing out of homes / like smoked bees.” These ending moments bring us outward in scope: if America here is no dreamhouse, we’re lead to question if it ever was, and for whom. Even the glorious dreamhouse has a choking hazard, its unwanted pieces liable to get stuck in our bodies until we have to push them out. Chang setting us on shaking ground allows us to question how to make it sturdier, and in our current climate, I wonder what would happen if we gathered some new architects.