‘Come on, Barbie, let’s go party!’

The Barbie doll’s role in popular culture and a look at her most recent project as a promoter of the classics.

By Leah Werier

She is a surgeon, a pilot, a rock star and, most importantly, a princess. She is the original blonde bombshell: every little girl’s plaything and every boy’s fantasy. Other bodacious beauties try to compete, but no one can master her timeless look. Marilyn Monroe came close, Paris Hilton doesn’t have a chance, and Pamela Anderson doesn’t even begin to compare to her. Yet her iconic image is well over 50 years old.

She is Barbie.

Considered to be one of the most recognizable household names in North America, Barbie is the bestselling fashion doll and arguably the most controversial children’s toy in current circulation.

Barbie is actually based on an “adult” doll, Bild Lilli, which originated in Germany in 1955. Semi-pornographic in nature, the Bild Lilli doll was adapted from a character that starred in a series of comics depicting her daily life with witty captions. In one comic, Bild Lilli stands with a police officer as she dons an itsy bitsy bikini. The police officer informs her that two-piece bathing suits are banned in public. To this Lilli quips, “Which piece do you want me to take off?” The Bild Lilli was only in production until 1964, when Mattel purchased the patent rights for the doll.

Ruth Handler is considered the founder of the Barbie doll. She noticed that her daughter only had paper fashion dolls to play with and that the other dolls marketed to children were based on infants. She felt that it was important for her daughter to play with a more mature representation of the female body. Handler’s husband co-owned the Mattel toy company at the time, so she tried to market the idea of an adult-figured doll to him, but her initial attempts were rejected.

That all changed on a family trip to Germany, during which Handler came across Bild Lilli, at an adult-oriented gift shop. Perhaps all it took to convince her husband and the Mattel toy company to produce a fashion doll was a proper visual representation. Mattel bought the rights to the Bild Lilli doll and made some minor adjustments, including a name change. Handler named the doll Barbie, after her daughter Barbara. Barbie made her first appearance at the American International Toy Fair in 1959.

Barbie has taken on many roles since her original debut as a “teen fashion model,” ranging from nurse to astronaut. Now she can add another impressive feat to her resumé: a promoter of classical music, teaming up with the musical director and conductor of the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra, Arnie Roth. Roth composed and directed the soundtracks for six Barbie films, and now the two are taking the mutually fruitful collaboration one step further with Barbie at the Symphony.

Advertised as a new way of bringing young audiences to classical music, this live concert experience features a real symphony orchestra, but it’s not the music that is bringing these little girls and their families into concert halls around the globe; it is the chance to see a “real” Barbie.

Barbie at the Symphonystars a full symphony orchestra playing music that includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, and Swan Lake. So where exactly does Barbie fit into all of this? Barbie can do anything and she tries to do everything: she dances, sings, paints, and at one point she even conducts. A “real” Barbie leads the symphony through a 16-bar phrase of the musical score.

The “real” Barbie is about as real as the plastic she is made from. She is in fact a computer-rendered image shown on a screen over the orchestra. Barbie has a similar presence in the six movies that she stars in. The animated dance scenes that accompany the symphony were originally performed by skilled dancers and then motion-captured, and are intended to entice young audiences to getting into the classical arts.

This live performance will without doubt draw a new audience to the symphony; but is it for the sake of learning to appreciate culture, or for further consolidating a brand name? Roth was interviewed on the Current about this very issue. He suggests that Barbie at the Symphonyis about bringing a new audience to classical music and he is worried about the future of symphonies. People are not just coming to the symphony to hear Beethoven played anymore; the symphony needs to do something else to attract a new audience. And what is a better way to attract an audience than with a household name like Barbie?

Some objections to Barbie at the Symphonyare against the Barbie doll itself. Barbie has been a centre of debate about female identity and unhealthy stereotyped roles for many years. Many feel that Barbie is a poor role model for today’s youth and this concern certainly isn’t a new.

When “Slumber Party Barbie” came out in 1965, along with the doll, little girls got a miniature pink bathroom scale that read 110 pounds. This Barbie also came with a book titled How to Lose Weight. On the inside of the book it advised, “Don’t eat.” Barbie’s figure has long been targeted as unrealistic; if she were enlarged to human size it is estimated that her chest would measure 36 inches, her waist 18 inches and her hips 33 inches. The University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, conducted research and determined that Barbie would be too thin to menstruate. Mothers eventually started to disapprove of Barbie’s unnaturally contrived image, and finally, in 1997, Barbie’s waist was remolded and made wider. Mattel stated it was because this new design was better suited to contemporary fashion.

“Teen Talk Barbie” was the first Barbie doll with a voice chip. Each individual doll could say four out of a possible 270 phrases, including “I love shopping!” and “Will we ever have enough clothes?”

The American Association of University Women was not concerned with either of those particular phrases. However, the phrase that caused the most stir was “Math class is tough,” which was uttered by 1.5 per cent of the dolls. Apparently Barbie was not taking her role as surgeon and academic very seriously. Mattel offered to exchange any doll that said this and made changes so that there were only 269 other potentially offensive phrases the doll would say.

Although this doll has undergone heavy criticism, she is widely sold. I met with Cindy Donatelli, a University of Manitoba women’s studies professor, to hear her perspective on the Barbie phenomenon.

@@

Manitoban: How significant is Barbie’s influence on young girls?

Cindy Donatelli: I think that Barbie is a very popular-selling toy, it’s a brand that really sells for Mattel and, in that way, it’s apart from all other dolls. Barbie is Barbie — and all other dolls sell below her. It is still a very, very strong product; whether girls are influenced is a complicated question. There is the history of women being weak-minded and becoming what they see so, in that way, it is a bad influence, but I think it’s just a toy.

M: But Barbie seems to have evolved into something more than a toy. Barbie is an ideal and a label, and many women consider her a beauty icon. Last year, MAC Cosmetics, a top-of-the-line artistic cosmetic company, released a limited edition line of products with none other than Barbie as the spokesperson. Her logo was engraved into eye shadows and pressed onto lipstick tubes and this wasn’t for little girls. This was for women interested in a luxury product as well as indulging in their Barbie fantasy. Barbie is represented like a princess, which is a type of fantasy portrayed in all sorts of popular media. What exactly defines the princess fantasy? Is this fantasy particular to young girls?

Donatelli: We see this same fantasy represented in Sex and the City, which appeals to young to middle-age audiences. What is the recipe for it? First of all, you have to look good. No one ever heard of an ugly princess, so the princess is cast in a certain role. I just saw [the movie] Enchanted , which illustrated that the princess fantasy still does live. The fantasy puts demands on the princess. She’s got to look and act a certain way, and what she is looking for is her prince. It is still an ideal; princesses don’t have a lot of skills, other than looking good and being nice and singing well and making sure that they attract the prince. I think that the one thing that’s troubling is seen in a show like Sex and the City. This is the idea that women are really driven to find men. Sure, they buy clothes for the joy of it, but it is also [for] looking good when they go out to the bar and meet whoever it is.

M: What, in your opinion, is a male’s perspective on this fantasy?

Donatelli: In so far as we don’t rock the boat enough, unfortunately their responses are still based on the same princess idea. But, one thing that we all see on Sex and the Cityis true about Barbie. Men usually don’t play with Barbie and they don’t know how high maintenance she is. But when you have to clothe her and buy all of her accessories you understand this. This is a form of training for young girls; I mean trying on dresses for the doll is training for themselves. This is the same idea we saw with Cher in Clueless —that is another princess fantasy. Guys will learn to smarten up once they realize that princesses are complicated.

M: Popular culture seems to be preoccupied with this princess fantasy, and we are constantly shown the role of the princess in movies. Kraft Cheese just came out with an adorable commercial that uses this fantasy to sell their product. A little boy hiding behind a mop of curly hair fights the dragon doodles on his page and has enough energy (thanks to their product) to save the princess located two desks over. Is this princess fantasy harmless, or should new roles be introduced to the big screen? What kind of role can we see in a movie that would be better?

Donatelli: What if we just saw women who weren’t with a man at all and were busy doing other things. I think Thelma and Louise was that kind of movie, but once again, it’s not all the way there because they are busy leaving men behind. But, what if women just went on a wild road trip on their own and it had nothing to do with meeting Brad Pitt along the way and sleeping with him? I think we still have yet to see that movie.

M: What kind of fantasy does Barbie portray?

Donatelli: I guess the blond bombshell. You know that Barbie started out as a pornographic doll and that Ruth Handler found her in Germany and then brought over to North America and smoothed her up? She is first and foremost blond, and a blond with a voluptuous, but still nice, body, all achieved by the way they smooth the plastic. Otherwise, she would be quite another doll. Her crotch and her boobs are very sensitive areas to deal with; I think it is interesting how she’s molded in plastic. She is an idealized figure and one that’s OK to handle even though she has these proportions that would make her massive if she were real.

There has been a series of anti-Barbie groups that have gone out and attempted to attack the Barbie doll and her skewed depiction of the female form. One of these attacks that received a lot of media attention was a group that carved private parts into her figure. Barbie obviously does not have a sexual identity, she does not have a vagina, she cannot reproduce, and this dehumanizes her. This is not the first representation of a female like this. The female form has been robed of its sexual identity for years in practices such as painting, which used to be primarily practiced by men. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painted a circular scene titled “The Turkish Bath” that features some sort of male fantasy of a public bath house. The voluptuous women lie around naked and they all share one thing in common: the lack of reproductive organs. Barbie is not intended to represent women in the same respect as this painting was; Barbie is toy.

M: What do you think the anti-Barbie groups were trying to accomplish by carving private parts into her figure?

Donatelli: This is an attempt to parody the Barbie doll. Among feminists, it is a deliberate project to protest the selling of the doll and the influencing of women and young girls. There have also been projects by artists who use the doll in their art to make a statement about it. In many cases, the artist or the people using the Barbie trademark have been prosecuted. There is that one song, “Barbie Girl,” by Aqua that was sued for copyright infringement. In this way, Mattel achieves a censorship about what can or can’t be done with the doll. They are always trying to look out for these projects; in a sense, that is troublesome. There are things that people want to say about Barbie. A very famous book of feminist essays was written on this subject, titled Adios, Barbie.

M: You stated that Barbie is a sort of training for girls. We dress her and buy her clothes and accessories, but it seems that now Barbie has adapted less superficial roles — she has careers. Are these new-found professional roles also training for girls, even if most little girls buy Barbie because she is a beautiful princess?

Donatelli: I don’t think that anybody bought Barbie because she is a surgeon. But it is an attempt to re-contextualize the doll because women are working.

@@

So, little girls may not be buying Barbie because she represents the surgeon they want to become; they love her for being a singer, a dancer and a princess. Girls can dress her in fantastic costumes and parade her around; the only limit is their own imagination. And maybe they will also begin to love her for being a classicical music aficionado.

On the CBC program the Current, guest host Maureen Taylor interviewed a five-year-old girl about her views on Barbie. The girl’s answer was, “I love them because they are so pretty and so wonderful and they look at the bright, bright sun.” She was also asked if she would like to see a real-live Barbie at the symphony, to which she replied exuberantly “Yes!” and then trailed off into a song about how pretty and nice Barbie is and how much Barbie likes to sing.

So, is this doll as dangerous as some people would like to have you believe? Donatelli says that Barbie isn’t as bad of a role model as she can be made out to be. Barbie is not the only one portraying idealized women. “I don’t think one of my goals as a feminist is to get rid of Barbie. What about idealized women on television? I think that if you don’t get it in once place, you get it in another place,” she said.

One thing that most people involved in these radical anti-Barbie movements forget is that Barbie originated as toy. She may be a representation of an idealized figure, but few little girls look at Barbie as something they need to become. “I don’t think little girls are dumb,” said Donatelli, “I think they know the difference between a doll and who they are. They do get a lot of strong messages, but I would hate to think that their self-esteem depends on a little piece of plastic.”

It is reassuring to think that young girls are not using Barbie as a role model, but rather, as a vessel for thier fantasies. Aqua said it best in their hit single: “Come on, Barbie, let’s go party!”