Playwright Jeremy O. Harris called out Barbie. This was on Monday, as protests marched across the country, and every brand on earth had apparently touched the base with a show of solidarity on social media. Even the Instagram account for the Bratz—the sexualized dolls that were diverse from the get and ate Barbie’s lunch for a while there back in the early aughts—had already quoted Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a post of its own. And then there was Barbie, in the most recent post from @barbiestyle, a popular subfeed, perched atop a credenza with her signature blonde bangs, seemingly unaware the world was on fire.
“While the @Bratz ladies were at the front lines of the uprising @Barbie was sitting comfortably in her mid century modern Malibu compound attempting to influence. I let her know that this is not ok with me,” Harris wrote on Twitter, posting a screenshot of his comment on the photo, which read, “Silence is violence!”
The tweet is surreal and devastating to the point of hilarity, and then back to devastating again. The doll wars may seem trivial, but the toys are a familiar plot point in the history of this country’s ongoing civil rights struggle. And Barbie, despite fledgling efforts to diversify, has remained a symbol of whiteness. Harris pointed out that the main feed had offered some words on the subject, and thanks in part to him, Barbie Style, Barbie’s “influencer” feed, eventually posted its support of the movement as well. Anyway, that’s just one example to pick from many.
Ads that tackle social unrest are nothing new. Budweiser co-opted 9/11. In 1971, the same year the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, Coke wanted to buy the world a Coke. But something tricky has happened in the past decade or so, as those kinds of appeals, once reserved for mass audiences, have found the customer in the intimate confines of their own phone, nestled alongside emails and texts from loved ones, Instagram posts from faraway friends, and the oft-brutal news of the day. It’s less expensive than ever to communicate with the customer with more frequency, in the customer’s moments of quiet and their moments of rage.
In the past week, as protests have roiled American cities in the wake of a Minneapolis police officer’s killing of George Floyd, brands have felt compelled to post. Here’s a random sampling from my feeds. The fitness-studio chain Pure Barre sent a note to its “New York Family,” saying that black lives matter and that it would be posting a black image to its Instagram. Whoever wrote it did not include a note about even a donation. After L’Oréal Paris declared, “Speaking out is worth it,” British model Munroe Bergdorf pointed out that the brand had dropped her, a black transgender woman, from an ad campaign after she spoke out against systemic white privilege following Charlottesville. Virgil Abloh had himself a Monday.