barbie, the one and only

As ASTRA members every year we get to do something that is cooler than cool. We get to have a party at the FAO Schwarz in New York City after hours. Those marvelous tin soldiers are there to greet us and take our coats. We are served and catered to, wined and dined, there is music and dancing. There are no screaming selfish children to interfere with our play time. We get first dibs on the slot car track. We get to have puppets made in our likeness. We get to paint our own pottery, design our own hot wheels, and we get to do it all with a glass of wine in one hand. For me every year the highlight is not the latest educational toy, or the hippest piece of urban art for babies on the bleeding edge of cool. For me the magic is with Barbie.The old girl is fifty this year, aging right alongside the rest of the baby boomers. I understand, as a strong modern woman I am supposed to look at her as the ultimate objectification of woman. Worse yet, of everything a woman can never hope to be. The carrot on a stick that leads our daughters to hate their flat chests and brunette hair, to binge and purge and go the way of the Karen Carpenter. But truly, I think she is magnificent. Maybe it's that I never once for a moment thought that I would be anything like Barbie. I played with fisher price little people and never expected to lose my arms and legs, I played with smurfs and growing up to be blue was a thought I never entertained, I played with Weebles and well, let's not go there. In the same way I played with Barbie and never expected to have size XX breasts with a 12 inch waist, or whatever they have figured out the measurement would be "if Barbie were a real woman". Now, my experience with Barbie was different from most girls. She came into my life when I was in the fifth grade. My family had to move in with my grandparents, and my Aunt Mary had a collection of Barbies from the 60's. These dolls had the zebra print swim suits, and leopard shoes and hand bags. They looked like Jackie O and Audrey Hepburn and every strong gracious female figure you could imagine. And I was older. Perhaps too old to play with dolls, but she was so compelling, and I did have three younger siblings to provide me with a cover. We spent hour after hour, afternoon upon afternoon taking our Barbies to the disco, and to the mall. Building apartments out of apple crates and bathroom towels, shoe box beds and stools made from cans of green beans draped with handkerchief's. We were in our own little world, and it had nothing to do with self loathing. It had to do with creativity and self expression. With growing up and trying on some of those grown up roles without having to really own them. (Ken and Barbie were often found naked in the shoe box together) Feeling our budding sexuality and our sense of what our lives might look like in ten years when we would be free to make our own choices, and drive our convertible to the disco and hang out at the mall, and break up with friends because they are dating our guy behind our back. All of these things, these games we enacted were so crucial to our development that I love Barbie for her beauty and for the service that she provided to me and to all of my little sisters. Barbie looks different now. I personally feel that she is a shadow of what she once was. All that pink and glitter, and much less in the way of class and poise. Her eyes are bigger, and more wide set. Her nose is rounded rather than pointed at the end. Her face is longer, and her lips fuller. I stood and analyzed and tried to give it a positive spin. "Maybe she is a better representation of our multi-cultural world" I thought. But really, I think that the Bratz have been so successful that Mattel has morphed Barbie and made her just a little bratty, which is a shame because a lady like Barbie should never be a brat. Even with these changes and what I feel is a general watering down of Barbie the iconic, I am certain that all over this country there are little girls, and some not so little girls, finding themselves through a 12 inch poseable doll. I am equally certain that the image of the doll is molded and shaped by the child as much as the child's self image is shaped by her play with the doll, and that she has no expectation or even desire to look like Barbie.