Barbie evolved beyond Cold War logic: Oppenheimer froze it in time

With the highly acclaimed and much-discussed “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” movies released last month, the cinematic universe has granted us a rare moment to reflect on the influence of these two very different icons from the early Cold War and their relationship to nuclear weapons.

Barbie and the bomb were both shaped by and shaped American imagination, then and now. Each embodied a stark and seemingly irreconcilable contradiction. Barbie’s problem was how to retain market share while responding to concerns that she represented an unrealistic and monolithic image of beauty.

The bomb followed a different path. Known through his work with the Manhattan Project as the father of the bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer was conflicted about whether nuclear weapons would provide security or, instead, enable humanity to destroy itself. But in official U.S. government circles, nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction were determined to be the key to security, not its opposite. 

Unlike Barbie’s transformation, the rationale behind the bomb has never evolved to answer the question of why it is necessary to threaten the world in order to save it.

Barbie entered the world in 1959, not with a defined role, but as a blank slate: She was what a woman could be, constrained only by a child’s imagination. Barbie is an astronaut, a fashion designer, a doctor, a teacher and a rock star. In 1992, she was the first female U.S. president. 

Barbie, however, also reinforced a limited notion of what it means to be feminine. She was originally only thin, white and blonde. Maybe most importantly, Barbie is hot. She is a positive role model because she is kind. She is forgiving. Although Barbie has her own opinions, she is soft-spoken and not aggressive. She doesn’t undermine the male ego. Barbie, ultimately, “behaves like a woman.”

But Barbie has not been a static figure. As the notion of womanhood faced pressure to expand and diversify, the difference between Barbie’s feminist abilities and her supposedly feminine image became increasingly stark. So, Barbie evolved. Her skin tone, waist size and hairstyle became more diverse. Today, there are Barbie-inspired dolls that can have stretch marks and acne scars and Barbies with prosthetic limbs and vitiligo. The image of Barbie as feminine now has more of the multiplicity that has always characterized Barbie’s ability, as a feminist, to pursue whatever career she wants.

Unlike Barbie, the bomb’s contradictions were explained away and then ignored. Many of the Manhattan Project scientists, including Oppenheimer, came to question the wisdom of producing a weapon capable of such destruction. Some thought it immoral to use a weapon that could wipe out entire cities and leave centuries of radioactivity or that would not discriminate between soldiers and civilians. Others wanted to share knowledge about atomic weapons. If everyone knew how to build an atomic arsenal, then having one would not provide any security advantage.

Many of the most eminent scientists of the day signed the memo crafted by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell that called on governments to find peaceful means to settle their differences. Their fear was that nuclear weapons + war = extinction. This was Oppenheimer’s nightmare until his death. He never reconciled how U.S. national security was furthered by threats to use weapons that were capable of genocide, or of his own role in creating this morass.

But Oppenheimer’s worries were quickly marginalized. The development of much more powerful nuclear weapons by the United States and then the Soviet Union led not to renewed efforts to limit or control them but to seemingly unrestrained growth in arsenals. By the mid-1960s, the United States had over 30,000 nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union would build 40,000 plus.

Today the United States has a smaller arsenal than during the height of the Cold War. But the word “smaller” hides context. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the current U.S. nuclear arsenal is the equivalent of 57,173 Hiroshima-size bombs.

The theory of deterrence captures the contradiction at the heart of the bomb that Oppenheimer helped produce. National security relies on making a threat which, if carried out, means one’s own death. A conflict that begins with even a few bombs carries the risk of escalation and destruction with consequences that alter and possibly end life on Earth. Thankfully, so the theory goes, political leaders would never rationally make such a choice. Even though they threaten nuclear use, surely they would prudently avoid escalation to nuclear war.

Although such thinking relies on unrealistic assumptions about human behavior and the fog of war, the logic that governed the bomb at the time of Barbie’s invention has seldom been reexamined. Instead of being challenged, it has become accepted as dogma.

Greta Gerwig’s "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan’s "Oppenheimer" lend us an opportunity to reflect on the normative changes surrounding the Barbie doll and the bomb. Both reflect societal values: Barbie, the ultimate femme and nuclear weapons, the ultimate security guarantee. 

But being feminine doesn’t look like what it did in the 1950s and it shouldn’t. Barbie isn’t just played by Margot Robbie — she is Issa Rae, she is Alexandra Shipp, she is Nicola Coughlin. Yet nuclear weapons remain stuck in a theory from the 1950s that equates security with suicide.

Samara H. Shaz is a program assistant in the International Peace and Security Program at the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Sharon K. Weiner is a senior resident fellow at the International Peace and Security Program at the Carnegie Corporation of New York.