Her perpetually arched and tippy-toed feet
Barbie, with her perpetually arched and tippy-toed feet, her inhuman proportions, and her features and personality that allows girls to project their own inner-world thoughts and desires onto her, is in the news again.
Barbie on the catwalk
This time Barbie is in the news because Mattel is launching a designer range for women. To mark Barbie's 50th birthday, designers Jeremy Scott and Vera Wang are collaborating with Mattel to develop the clothing collection. The fashion and cosmetics range will be unveiled during New York Fashion Week in February and a special wedding dress will be part of the line that will have a life sized human version, as well as a miniature one for Barbie herself.
Click here for a great article about the new fashion collection, By Lisa Armstrong, for Times Online.
Barbie gets a lot of flack about her questionable origins (she was modeled after a German "sex doll", literally a doll that men could buy in sex shops, called Lilli) and her measurements have been the source of controversy ever since it was pointed out that if Barbie was a real person her measurements would be an impossible 36-18-38 (there is even controversy over what her exact measurements would be.)
One of the things to note about Barbie is that, as Stephen Kline wrote in Out of the Garden, "Barbie was specifically crafted to invoke a specific kind of imaginary role-playing that went beyond the mothering and family scripts that had until then defined doll play." Sharon Lamb, in The Secret Lives of Girls says that "This new script equaled a kind of power for girls not easily found in games of wife and mother."
When I had my daughter, I thought about not having Barbie in the house. I've always wanted to nurture my daughter's self-esteem and fierce feminine qualities — have her interest focused on something beyond just fashion and shoes. But then I thought about the fact that I played with Barbies and I don't feel that I have been damaged in any way in having done so. So, why not? I bought her Barbies and allowed others to give them to her as gifts. And it has been interesting to see how her play with them differs widely from what my play was.
There has been a lot more world creating rather than role playing, in her play. There has been creative morphing of the Barbies to extreme physicalities that speaks to something in my daughter's imagination. She rarely dresses them up but she gives her Barbies wings and robotic extemeties.
But back to fashion. I can't imagine myself buying Barbie fashions. It seems almost garish to picture grown women in Barbie attire. Maybe because for so long there have been Barbie dress up ensembles for little girls. Barbie fashion has heretofore been for pretending to be grownup and there is something off-putting in adults dipping into the wading pool of Barbie pretend dress-up.
Interesting fact: Did you know that Ruth Handler, creator of Barbie, designed a replacement prosthetic breast for women who have had mastectomys? In 1975, Handler received a patent for Nearly Me, a prothesis made of material close in weight and density to natural breasts.
Glad you sent me the link to your blog! I am rarely on myspace so this is great!
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Thanks, Robin!
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