The heroine’s sofa: pink. The shower head: pink. And the slide that leads from her villa into the pool: of course, pink. On the film set of “Barbie”, which is scheduled to start in German cinemas in July and tells of the life of the toy doll, pretty much everything shines in this tone. Because it took so much paint to paint Barbieland in the protagonist’s favorite look, “the world ran out of pink”. That said the strip’s production designer in an interview with the Architectural Digest jokingly – it was picked up by many media and became independent as news.
However, it wasn’t quite like that. This is also confirmed by Lauren Proud from the color manufacturer Rosco, who supplied the color for the set. Not only the film contributed to the pink shortage at her company, but also problems with the supply chains and severe frosts in Texas, which destroyed the materials necessary for paint. But it’s true Proud settled in the Los Angeles Times quotethe filmmakers were given “everything we had”.
In fact, the world is not short of purples. Singer Peter Fox announces on the radio that he sees the “future in pink”, in the drugstore there is a (usually more expensive) pink razor for the ladies next to the yellow or blue razor. And in the toy store, Lego’s Duplo box, which is explicitly advertised for girls, comes in pink. From inside the box beckons a straw-blonde toy figure reminiscent of Barbie.
Almut Schnerring knows that she won’t run out of work anytime soon when she comes across pink products everywhere and an entire film set is decorated in that color. The author takes a critical look at the “pink-light-blue trap”. That’s what she calls the phenomenon that products with a female target group are often pink, with little crowns here and ruffles there. At the same time, much that is aimed at little boys or grown men has a darker tinge and is intended to appeal to tough guys and brave superheroes. “Lifeworlds, behavior and role expectations are linked to pink and blue,” says Schnerring.
If a company relies on gender segregation and pink gender labels, it overlooks the connection to the shortage of skilled workers, such as there is in trade or IT. “Anyone who tells girls that their future lies in beauty, fashion and housekeeping shouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t enough female offspring.” Schnerring calls the fact that the Barbie manufacturer Mattel has released several special editions of the doll in recent years, which show her as a judge or scientist, “bunt-baiting”, i.e. fishing for positive attention. This only superficially gives the impression of wanting to overcome old role models.
But even those who reject the division of the world into pink and blue could still be surprised by the “Barbie” film. The director Greta Gerwig has so far not attracted attention with under-complex female roles; in addition a lot of irony can already be seen in the trailer, when Margot Robbie’s Barbie, with Ryan Gosling’s Ken in tow, meets the “real world”. Far away from her pink villa.