Latest / Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD / Autistic Barbie Just Dropped - Here's My Honest Take

Transcript

Autistic Barbie Just Dropped - Here's My Honest Take · Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD

• 0:00
  So artistic Barbie is here. Let's discuss.
• 0:04
  OK guys, so the the Mattel brand dropped a inclusive doll of
• 0:11
  Barbie being the artistic Barbie, right?
• 0:13
  And this kind of sent shockwaves across the community and a lot
• 0:16
  of people are talking about and discussing different things, but
• 0:19
  I want to come down to the nitty gritty and talk about it.
• 0:21
  And this is a no BS, just straight down the middle talk
• 0:28
  about it. OK, so when I first heard about
• 0:31
  this, it came up on my news feed, right, that Bobby had
• 0:34
  released this doll on the day in the morning.
• 0:36
  Obviously being in the community, I looked at my
• 0:38
  computer and I'm like, Oh my goodness, like what is this?
• 0:40
  And it was really interesting. Bobby has, and I don't if you,
• 0:44
  if you haven't seen it, she's basically there's a Barbie doll
• 0:46
  that is kind of got movable elbows and wrists so that she
• 0:50
  can do like flapping or steaming, you know, as we call
• 0:54
  it in, in professional terms. And she also comes with
• 0:58
  headphones. She has an ACC communicator,
• 1:02
  basically like a, like an iPad thing that you can use to talk
• 1:05
  with and for, you know, people with speech difficulty.
• 1:10
  And it was really interesting because she also seems to be
• 1:15
  kind of like a Barbie of color, which is kind of cool.
• 1:18
  So it's, you know, a female autistic Barbie of color.
• 1:21
  So you're hitting like 3 minority groups there or
• 1:26
  marginalized groups in one doll, which I think is pretty amazing.
• 1:30
  And that representation doesn't happen often.
• 1:33
  Know what I did see and I put this on my TikTok and Instagram
• 1:35
  was a guy called Alex. Let me see his podcast.
• 1:40
  I'll bring bring up the name of his podcast.
• 1:41
  Eventually he was talking about this and he was like he, he was
• 1:47
  like one of the first videos I've seen talking about the
• 1:49
  Barbie, right? And his video, if I found I find
• 1:53
  his channeling for you now. So because I did a reaction to
• 1:57
  sort of the response and he basically said that the the
• 2:03
  Barbie was not right or it wasn't it wasn't the best thing
• 2:08
  ever. Goodness, I can't find his his
• 2:10
  video now Alex. It's like Alex the ADHD
• 2:13
  podcaster or something like that.
• 2:15
  I don't follow his channel just came off my feed right and he
• 2:19
  was basically saying like, oh, how stereotypical is it that
• 2:23
  that Barbie has headphones and she's carrying around a
• 2:26
  calculator, which is really but it's not calculated in the ACC
• 2:28
  and I'm I'm mistaken this in the video before I'd looked into the
• 2:32
  doll when I made my reaction video and I'll leave a link for
• 2:34
  a reaction video as well down below in the description of this
• 2:36
  video, so you can see it in the the short video.
• 2:39
  He was basically saying that, you know, there's no look for
• 2:43
  autistic people, how can how dare they do this and being
• 2:46
  being like really self-righteous and trying to kind of downplay
• 2:49
  the fact that Mattel had made this thought.
• 2:51
  Now, not just that. I also seen a bunch of other
• 2:53
  people kind of saying online like, Oh, Bobby, the, you know,
• 2:58
  the autistic Bobby, so stereotypical blah, blah, blah.
• 3:01
  But, you know, not forgetting that if if they had made a
• 3:05
  white, you know, male Bobby boy, that would be way more
• 3:12
  stereotypical, right? And if you think about it like
• 3:18
  that would have been a more stereotypical kind of autistic
• 3:20
  person. OK.
• 3:21
  But when we think about representation, there's there's
• 3:24
  a few things we're going to think about 1 is that we need
• 3:26
  visibility within the mainstream market.
• 3:29
  OK. And so when Mattel comes out and
• 3:31
  says, Hey, we're going to do an autistic Barbie doll, that's
• 3:33
  amazing work. That's really, really good.
• 3:36
  That's like, hey, we have we're seeing, you know, like the
• 3:39
  autistic community, autistic individuals are seen and not
• 3:42
  only that, the kids who have those conditions and and
• 3:46
  difficulties like we have well then look up to those things and
• 3:49
  be like, wow, Bobby's like me. You know, I can play with the
• 3:51
  Barbie. That's like me, not just like a
• 3:52
  Barbie. That's like the stereotypical
• 3:54
  preppy girl, like Bobby always has been a blonde, white, you
• 3:57
  know, Malibu Stacy type of thing.
• 4:00
  And I think this is so cool. Now, what bugs me about this
• 4:04
  video that Alex did, but he was dissing the towel and saying it
• 4:06
  was like, not a good thing. And you know, it's not a
• 4:10
  representation. It's kind of like, where do we
• 4:13
  go from here? If you if you constantly say we
• 4:17
  need representation, we need representation.
• 4:19
  We need people to say and and show autism in mainstream.
• 4:23
  That means including toys and video games and TV shows and
• 4:27
  movies. And then they come out and they
• 4:29
  do it and then we instantly just say that's rubbish, doesn't know
• 4:31
  how you do it. What are we doing?
• 4:34
  Like we're literally saying to these people, hey, that's not
• 4:38
  good enough. That's not good enough.
• 4:40
  And what I think would would happen is just my opinion is
• 4:43
  that eventually those companies are just going to go, OK, we're
• 4:46
  fine. We're not going to do it then
• 4:47
  because we can never get it right now.
• 4:49
  I had a similar experience to this when I was on, umm, TV.
• 4:53
  So I was, uh, back in, I think it was 2000 and I think might
• 4:57
  have been the end of 2018, maybe even just 2019.
• 5:01
  No, it was 2019. I was cast for ATV show called
• 5:06
  The Circle by Netflix, right? And it was running by a channel
• 5:09
  here called Channel 4 in the UK. And the idea of the show is
• 5:12
  basically that it's kind of like a Big Brother thing, but you're
• 5:16
  all in a separate apartment and you communicate through like a
• 5:18
  big TV screen with like what's up on it.
• 5:20
  And you talk back and forth with your teammates, but they don't
• 5:24
  know who you are. So you could be catfishing them.
• 5:27
  And the person who catfishes the best basically wins the game.
• 5:32
  However, they, the channel here, Channel 4 commissioned by
• 5:37
  Netflix, they actually have, they're known for being kind of
• 5:40
  like representative of different minority groups and things like
• 5:44
  that. But they cast me because I was
• 5:48
  an autistic person and I was playing an autistic person and
• 5:51
  seeing people could catch me out.
• 5:53
  Now I was playing number one. I did all the things for them,
• 5:55
  right? Like everything I'd even, I did
• 5:56
  like commercials for them, did national newspaper interviews.
• 5:59
  I went into hiding because as often as we go on reality TV,
• 6:01
  they put into hiding 1st and then you come out on TV and they
• 6:03
  did all that stuff and they paid me a bunch of money.
• 6:06
  And then literally 2 days before going into hiding before filming
• 6:09
  the, the full parts of the show, my executive casting producer
• 6:13
  from one of others phones me now like hey, we're dropping you
• 6:15
  from the show and that's a why. And I said, well, between you
• 6:19
  and I, they just want to play it safe.
• 6:20
  I was like, what the hell does that mean?
• 6:22
  And they said look, the the channel known for having like,
• 6:26
  you know, inclusion and diversity.
• 6:28
  They're scared of mistreating you off, seeming like they're
• 6:33
  getting it wrong or mistreating you on TV because they don't
• 6:35
  want the backlash. And I thought someone said,
• 6:37
  well, this is shocking. That's just absolute like
• 6:38
  nonsense. Don't you know, no one's going
• 6:40
  to think that they're treating me wrongly.
• 6:41
  You know, it's my decision to go on TV and blah, blah, blah.
• 6:44
  But this is exactly it. This is an example of that.
• 6:46
  This is why people don't put, you know, it's just the people
• 6:49
  in reality TV or in, you know, it's highly represented in
• 6:52
  movies and TV shows because the backlash from the community,
• 6:56
  albeit a small minority to the community, give it such garbage
• 7:00
  like, oh, you can't. It's broke wrong.
• 7:02
  Like they just complained about it.
• 7:04
  Complaining gets you nowhere positive reinforced progression
• 7:09
  will get you to the goal. Now if you had an issue with the
• 7:11
  Barbie you say you would you'd be used the yes and the type of
• 7:16
  language be like this is cool and I think it could be improved
• 7:21
  right? Or do you like the Barbie?
• 7:22
  Yes, and I also think there are room for improvement because I
• 7:26
  think it is a good thing. Do I think it's the perfect?
• 7:28
  No, nothing's ever going to be perfect, right?
• 7:30
  What what are we talking about? But what we should be
• 7:32
  celebrating here is visibility on mainstream brands for toys
• 7:37
  for kids on the autism spectrum. Absolutely fantastic.
• 7:40
  And the fact that we are moving into a more accepting and
• 7:47
  viewable visible world for autistic individuals where
• 7:50
  people can not only just know about autism, they can see it,
• 7:53
  they can interact with it. Now they have a doll.
• 7:55
  Like so much more learning is going to come from this, even
• 7:58
  just on the on the macro side of it.
• 8:01
  But when we go down to the the micro side, when we go to
• 8:05
  schools that are going to be having this doll in in the
• 8:07
  classroom can teach so much about autistic individuals,
• 8:10
  especially to other peers. Now, I think this is a good
• 8:12
  thing. I think it's a step forward and
• 8:13
  I think it's a step in the right direction.
• 8:14
  And if you have comments on this, I want to know because,
• 8:19
  you know, this does bug me how negative the community can be
• 8:23
  about everything. Like, you know, they, there's,
• 8:26
  there's that whole thing, you know, nothing without nothing
• 8:28
  about us, without us. And I understand that, right?
• 8:30
  But also, it does beg a bigger question if it's nothing about
• 8:35
  is without is what about the reverse?
• 8:37
  Like, and I was saying this to my partner, like, like movies
• 8:42
  where autistic individuals are cast to actors who are not
• 8:47
  autistic, right? And a lot of people have a
• 8:48
  massive issue with this. And I don't see a massive
• 8:54
  problem with it because the reverse is also true.
• 8:56
  So Dan Aykroyd, one of the most famous actors in Hollywood from
• 9:00
  the past maybe 30 years. Dan Aykroyd, a movie producer,
• 9:03
  writer, and an actor from Ghostbusters and Blues Blues
• 9:06
  Brothers and things like that. He has Asperger syndrome, right?
• 9:10
  So he's autistic and he plays non autistic characters.
• 9:14
  So by that rule of thumb, typically non autistic actors
• 9:18
  can play autistic characters, right?
• 9:20
  If autistic actors can play non artistic characters.
• 9:23
  But this is just a, I'm just looking at it from from a
• 9:25
  viewpoint. I'm not honestly saying like
• 9:27
  what is right or wrong. I'm just saying that like, this
• 9:29
  is how this is how it looks now. I understand that when we're
• 9:32
  dealing with autistic individuals represented in
• 9:36
  television has to be cracked, right?
• 9:38
  And I think the good Doctor is a good explanation of this and how
• 9:41
  it comes across. Atypical was another one really,
• 9:44
  really good. I work with Netflix on us
• 9:45
  actually. But in terms of like moving
• 9:49
  forward, I think if we have autistic consultants and they
• 9:54
  don't overdo it or they don't kind of like almost make fun of
• 9:58
  it, then I think that a non autistic actor acting autistic
• 10:01
  can be achieved very well as we've seen.
• 10:05
  But also we have to say to ourselves, then it's OK for
• 10:07
  autistic actors to play non autistic people.
• 10:10
  We have to be fair across the board, right?
• 10:12
  And so it's just something to think about and how we think
• 10:14
  about inclusion, diversity, growth, development, nothing
• 10:17
  about us without us. Like I love to know, like, what
• 10:20
  is it like? And as an autistic person
• 10:23
  myself, I feel deeply about these things and I love seeing
• 10:26
  representation. And so far none of it has
• 10:30
  impacted me negatively apart from there was a movie by Sia
• 10:33
  which was difficult to watch because it was, it was unusual,
• 10:37
  I think was called music or something like that, right?
• 10:38
  And it was just a difficult, it was difficult to watch.
• 10:41
  But apart from that, everything else has been pretty decent,
• 10:44
  like, and I think that everyone is is doing their best.
• 10:47
  It's not perfect, but we'll get there.
• 10:49
  All right, guys, let me know your thoughts.