By now, you’ve probably already read some pretentious analyses of the Barbie Doll Phenomenon, Curse of Western Civilization. (If you haven’t, that luck won’t last.) Critics blame Barbie for eating disorders, poor body image among adolescent girls, and the frivolous demands for plastic surgery. ‘’Barbie’’ is now a term of contempt for spacey bimbos perceived as ‘’plastic.’’ Why, if Barbie hadn’t existed, myriad millions of females would be ever so much closer to attaining the feminist utopia where everyone is blissfully oblivious to beauty.
Much as I dislike the doll, I think such critics are mistaken. Their focus is too close. Not only are they exaggerating a single element of popular culture, they’re concentrating too much on the doll’s figure, misrepresenting her uniqueness, and taking her out of context. My views come from a different vantage point: I didn’t buy Barbies, I sold them.
When Barbie was unveiled in March, 1959, I was working part-time in a privately owned toy, gift, and houseware store in Joliet, Illinois. When we saw the first advertisements and then the doll itself, we clerks were puzzled as well as repulsed. That nasty feral face with its molded eyelashes! That bulging body tapering to peg-like feet! Barbie was the ugliest doll we’d ever seen. Why would any little girl want one?
So much for our taste — a culture gap had already begun to open up behind us. I had more in common with women 10 or 20 years older than with girls 10 years younger. And the difference persists to this day.
The little girls, you see, weren’t fascinated by basic Barbie in her striped jersey swimsuit — they were enthralled by her clothes. Of course, dolls had been beautifully dressed before and one could often buy extra outfits or patterns to make them. But Barbie was presented more as a mannequin than a toy person. Her relentlessly multiplying wardrobe, superbly fabricated by low-paid Asian workers, came with clever accessories and was sealed in plastic to stay fresh. Blonde or brunette, the doll herself cost only $2.98, but the price of all the outfits released during the first year of production added up to $1,049.00. (For comparison, my wages were $1 per hour back then.)
It’s overkill to accuse Barbie’s unnatural figure of harming young psyches. Distorted perceptions come from many sources and always have. Barbie isn’t responsible for trends that probably began when ancient artists began representing idealized bodies. Different eras have preferred different physical types — try to picture Barbie dressed as a flapper of the 1920s.
Contrary to what’s often claimed, Barbie wasn’t the first modern doll with a mature figure. Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls, which included a line of adult operetta heroines, had been around for at least 10 years. Mme. Alexander had long designed womanly dolls, ranging from 9-inch Cissette to 20-inch Cissy.
But the exquisite loveliness of Mme. Alexander’s offerings were never aimed at a mass market. They were more expensive, had smaller wardrobes, and were available through fewer outlets.
Barbie, on the other hand, was the hard-sell product of a big corporation called Mattel which advertised on television, including The Mickey Mouse Club. Brand-name dolls had been popular before, but Mattel’s approach to merchandizing targeted children rather than parents, pioneering the media hucksterism so rampant today.
As a mass-produced product, Barbie could be sold everywhere and at discounts conventional toy sellers couldn’t match. Joliet’s first discount store opened in the town’s first suburban strip mall around the time of Barbie’s debut. Neither my employer nor other downtown retailers could compete at selling Barbies or anything else. We went out of business in the summer of 1961, and downtown decayed.
Barbie is less ugly these days. But she is still Barbie, a fixed character, and not Jane or Brunhilda or whomever each girl could imagine. She can’t acquire a distinctive personality or serve as a vehicle for a fantasy play. Although her designers costume her for various contemporary roles — wasn’t there an Astronaut Barbie once? — they nudge the child into playing by their script.
For 40 years, Barbie has been training little girls to fit into mass culture and become good consumers. Well, I dreamed of wider horizons for my girls. Don’t you?
