Flashback Fridays: Barbie Flake or Feminist, Pt.1

I just finished reading M.G.Lord's Forever Barbie An Unauthorized History of A Real Doll. Lord's approach was refreshing because she's a bit of a fan of the doll-yet she's not blind to some of Barbie more Bimboesque incarnations. She also is not so anti-Barbie that she ignores the pioneering work of Barbie's creator Ruth Handler, or Barbie's contributions to little girl's (and some boys') play. All in all it's a fair and interesting 'biography' and one I would recommend to book clubs around the country. The book's greatest problem is that it was written in 1994 before Barbie's body was changed to have more realistic measurements.....and more importantly before the great Barbie/Bratz wars of the auts.

For Flashback Friday, (once again not posted on an actual Friday), I've decided to put up some classic Barbie television ads to look at her evolution from teenage fashion model, (yeah she was supposed to be sixteen in the sixties), to  the 'We Girls Can Do Anything" as long as it involves wearing pink Barbie of the 80s. I Give You:
A Short History Of  Barbie As Told In Commercials



The Mattel Company's were advertising pioneers they were the first toy company to directly appeal to children via television. This ad was first aired on The Mickey Mouse Club.

The whole basis of the doll was to act as a three dimensional paper doll----i.e. a doll you could put lots of different clothes on.  Barbie's bizarre dimensions (copied from a novelty doll in Germany), are the best measurements to display clothes on a miniature model. If Barbie had measurements like a real women-even an almost perfect woman-the clothes would look odd. I'm sure no one could have known at the time that later Barbie would be accused of giving women low self-esteem-especially since the whole idea was to create a doll with a career that showed little girls they did not have to grow up to be wives and mothers.  However it's obvious that Mattel knew exactly what they were doing when they promoted Barbie's glamorous lifestyle.

Innocent stuff but you can see where Barbie would later be criticized for inducting girls into a consumerist culture. There's more than a little truth in the popular ' 90s T-shirt and bumper sticker slogan "I wanna be Barbie that bitch has everything!"

Of course as Barbie became more and more popular Mattel had to release more and more products to keep children and parents interested. Interestingly enough this little theater set is not so different from the puppet theaters they sell in 'educational' toy stores today.

Barbie's received tons of flack over the years for encouraging girls to stay in the subservient sex role so it's interesting to note that Handler never caved when the pressure was repeatedly put on her to marry Barbie off ,and give her children. Handler slyly created babysitter Barbie so she could have small children to play with. She did give her a boyfriend-though really Ken is about as disposable as anyone of her accessories. (Not to mention Ken's sexuality as been called in to question repeatedly over the years. Move over Midge---many of us suspect Ken may really be Barbie's best girlfriend).

Far warning y'all a follow up Ken blog is in the works!

Mattel didn't just make Barbie appealing by continually updating her clothes and accessories, but through innovations in materials they improved the doll's flexibility by making her easier to play with.

Barbie & Co's bendable legs may not be that impressive now - but it was big stuff back in the 60s.

Then of course there was Twist n Turn Barbie in '67 complete with a new face mold. Barbie no longer looked like an Aryan dominatrix but a fresh faced young woman you might see lounging on the beach.

The beach of course is often thought of  as Barbie's main habitat and I place the blame squarely on Malibu Barbie's oddly brown shoulders. True, the original Barbie came in a swimsuit but Malibu Barbie in the early 70s cemented Barbie's reputation as a beachcomber.

If you'd like to see just how many accessories and friends Barbie had amassed in the 70s all you have to do is watch this next video-though-fair warning-it's a long one.

I'll admit there's something a tad 'Stepford' in that Barbie video that gives me the willies.

You may have noticed a surprising lack of pink in all the commercials thus far-that's because Barbie didn't decide on a favorite color until the '80s when Mattel realized pink is the color that tests best with little girls. Yep, I love Barbie but we can blame her for the over saturation of pink in little girl culture. However while Barbie may have done everything while wearing pink-she was doing some pretty amazing things. The working girl movement of the 80s led to Barbie getting some nifty jobs. Perhaps the niftiest being  an astronaut.

Okay so she likes to go to the discotech and shake her groove thing in a fluffy dress after work.....if you were stuck in zero gravity drinking your own urine and not showering for months you'd want to pretty yourself up and go dancing to. Hey it's not like she kidnapped a rival for Ken's affection and dumped her in the trunk of her car. (Too soon?) I should note that Barbie was actually an astronaut in the 60s-in a far more realistic suit. For the 60s that was down right radical, yet when Barbie is criticized it's almost never brought up, she was in space almost 20 years before an actual female astronaut.

On of the most popular Barbie's of the 80s was day -to -night Barbie, a business woman complete with shoulder pads

In case you've been watching with the sound off the 80s were the time of the 'We Girls Can Do Anything, Right Barbie' ad campaign. However the 80s were also  a decade of excess, and while Mattel stopped short of releasing Bret Easton Ellis Barbie she certainly had an affluent lifestyle.

  So is Barbie a flake or an important feminist icon? Talk amongst yourselves until I put up part 2 of this blog...which will be.....whenever I damn well feel like it. Hell, Barbie told me I could do whatever I wanted.