I see that the Barbie movie is set to be released July 21. So a few reflections on a doll which has enjoyed one of the longest runs of popularity, 64 years. I had one of the early Barbies (not the original one in the striped swimsuit), and Barbie and her stuff still appear on my youngest two granddaughters' Christmas wish list. But she's really not the same doll, she has morphed and evolved since 1959, when she was first sold.
In the early sixties, she was all the rage among the pre-teens. Everyone had one. Except me (or so I thought). My mom didn't approve of Barbie, said she wasn't going to buy me one. She thought that it was a toy company ploy to get girls to keep buying stuff. That it encouraged materialism, and besides, no one's body actually looked like that. She wasn't wrong about those things. But my favorite cousin had one, and my friends all had one. So Mom said I could have one if I bought her with my allowance, or birthday money. Well, birthday money was already spent. I had an allowance of 50 cents a week, so I decided to go that route.
In the store, a Barbie doll was about five dollars. From the Montgomery Ward catalogue, she was three dollars, plus 50 cents postage. So I saved my money for seven weeks. I filled out an order blank to Montgomery Ward, enclosed three dollar bills in the envelope, and Scotch taped two quarters to the order blank for postage. I stuck the envelope in the mailbox, and waited with baited breath. After about 10 days, my package showed up. I was now the proud owner of a Barbie.
Of course Mom was right, the doll was only the initial outlay. There was an endless collection of clothes and gear, that her fans eagerly bought. Except on fifty cents a week, I was limited. Fortunately my two grandmothers were expert seamstresses, and there were doll clothes patterns around. One grandma even crocheted a tiny doll turtleneck sweater. I acquired Barbie's best friend Midge with vacation money about a year later.
Well, when pre-teens become teenagers the fascination with dolls soon wanes. The dolls languished in a toy drawer until my two much younger sisters co-opted them. My brothers had some GI Joe figures that were about the same size. One of them had Asian features, the brothers called him Charlie Cong. They also had a Tonka jeep that GI Joe and his friends rode around in. So my sisters decided Barbie and Midge were going to date the GI Joe guys. There was a jeep wreck when Midge was riding around with Charlie Cong She needed surgery. So there was a red nail polish incision on her tummy. It wouldn't come off.
Fast forward awhile, and I observed my sisters playing with newer Barbies. I said, "So Mom, what's up? I know the girls didn't buy them with their own money!" She said ruefully, Well dear, you were my oldest, and I learned over the years that not all hills are worth dying on".
The dolls my granddaughters play with don't look like the original Batbies. They are more attractive and more natural looking.. And instead of buying clothes for them, the outfits come with a new doll. Barbie is a veterinarian, a teacher, a nurse or a doctor. The message is more body positive. There is even a Downs Syndrome Barbie. Of course she has a collection of friends and family members. So Mattel is still making a lot of money off the Barbie franchise.
Not long ago one of my sisters was going through some stuff and said, "Hey, I found your old Midge doll." I said, "Thanks...I guess. Where's her arm?" She said, "I don't know. She must have gotten in another jeep wreck with Charlie Cong." Those dolls had a hard life.
As much as Margot Robbie is easy on the retinas, I don't think I'll be going to the movie. Thanks, Katherine, for the enjoyable recollections about being a pioneer in a social phenomenon. G.I. Joe was after my time for which I should perhaps be thankful. I did get sucked into the Davey Crockett thing. Perhaps a more successful and insidious method for fleecing parents than Soupy Sales telling kiddies to get money out of mommy's pocketbook and mailing it to him.
ReplyDeleteAt least two of my sisters (one was one year younger than me, one was two years younger - that's how my parents rolled; I believe there was one summer my mom was at home with five of us, all pre-school age) had Barbies. I had forgotten about Midge! That's an old name that, AFAIK, hasn't made a baby-name comeback yet. Was it short for Margaret? And I think there was another friend doll, too. Pepper? Skipper? Every Saturday morning they'd wake up and play Barbies in the basement, probably until the cartoons came on. They had a house, a car, possibly a horse, and outfits scattered all over the floor.
ReplyDeleteI never had a GI Joe. Nor his competition, Action Jackson. Wasn't really into dolls or action figures. Although I'm told that, when I was a toddler, I dragged a Raggedy Andy all over the house.
Barbie has been a recurring character, and then I think promoted to secondary character. in Pixar's Toy Story franchise. Those films poke some good-natured fun at some Boomer classic toys. But if I'm not mistaken Greta Gerwig is going to give us some additional twists on Barbie.
I suppose Midge was a nickname for Margaret. My grandma had a friend called Midge, so yeah, that name's not too current. Barbie's full name was Barbara Millicent. Especially the Millicent part, you don't hear that any more. Skipper was Barbie's younger sister. She was built more like an actual pre-teen, no D-cup bust. Now there is a sister named Chelsea. Barbie's parents must have had a late in life child, LOL.
DeleteI am remembering, though I can't find any reference to prove it, that Sears marketed a Black Barbie in the early 60s. Christie, her black friend, showed up in the 1980s. Sears also had a black Chatty Cathy in the 60s.
I as a bit too old when Barbie came out. But I’m quite sure my mother wouldn’t have bought one for me. We lived on a very tight budget. I didn’t have any dolls actually after a soft baby doll that I had when I was very young. I also didn’t have an allowance. I did have a paper dolls set though. I don’t remember my brothers ever playing with GI Joes either, but our own sons ( now in late 30 s early 49 s) loved them. We have a box of them and their various vehicles (and weapons of war) in the attic. My siblings and I really didn’t have much in the way of toys. Bicycles, balls and roller skates.
DeleteNothing wrong with bicycles, balls and roller skates. They get kids outside playing, a lot better for them than parking in front of the television or playing video games.
DeleteWhen we still lived in LA, with good weather almost all the time ( very little rain), we almost always played outside. Even board games ( candy land, monopoly etc) , cards ( Crazy Eights, Fish etc), or jacks. Everyone had a fenced backyard and some kind of deck or patio so we played there when we weren’t biking or roller skating or playing something that involved a ball. Even in the mountains we did, but the hilliness of our streets was sometimes an obstacle to balls and roller skates. When it snowed we did snow stuff. In the summers we did lake stuff.
DeleteAnne, did you actually play with jacks? That was one of those old-fashioned toys that adults gave us that we had no idea what to do with. They ended up scattered all over the floor of our basement and then we'd step on them with our bare feet.
DeleteMarbles was another thing that kids had (including me for a time) but that nobody I knew actually knew how to play a game with.
Yes, Jim we played with jacks - and marbles. But we preferred the jacks. The jacks were easy - just count how many you could pick up on the ball bounce. Whoever had the most when all the jacks were picked up won. With marbles we mostly played something like pétanque - boules - trying to knock other people’s marbles out of the circle.
DeleteWe played with yo- yos too.
DeleteI used to play marbles with my brothers. I also took them to school and played them with the boys. I would have gotten in trouble with Sister if she found out I was playing for keeps. But hey, if I won a "bumble bee" fair and square, I wasn't giving it up. There was also one called a "snot agate" (you can imagine the color). I didn't try to keep those.
DeleteThe Cat’s Eye marbles were the most popular with our little neighborhood group.
DeleteRuth Handler, who with her husband was co-founder of Mattel, was the originator of Barbie. She correctly surmised that there was a market for a teen fashion doll. But it is puzzling to me that she used a German doll, Bild Lilli, for her inspiration. Lilli was actually a gag gift aimed at men. She more seemed like 36 than 16, kind of sexy and edgy, the pictures I've seen make her look like a chain smoker and hard drinker. But Ruth Handler acquired the rights to Lilli, and proceeded to make Barbie a lot younger and more innocent. That is still her image, a more wholesome persona. So why bother with Lilli?
ReplyDeleteI mentioned that Greta Gerwig, the director of the forthcoming Barbie movie, has some twists in store. This very long article (I'm still plowing through it) in the New York Times Magazine describes some of it:
ReplyDelete"As the movie begins, Robbie’s Barbie wakes in her Dreamhouse and cheerfully waves to all the other Barbies in their Dreamhouses, which she can do because none of the Dreamhouses have walls. (Barbies have nothing to hide, and nowhere to hide it if they did.) Barbieland is a multicultural Barbiarchy: The president is a Barbie and so are the Supreme Court justices, Nobel Prize winners, pilots, doctors and construction crews. The Kens, in contrast, have one job, the frustratingly ill-defined “Beach,” where they cheerlead and jockey in hopes of being noticed. The Barbies know that they are dolls — that Mattel created them, that there is a real world where little girls play with them — but they are otherwise blithely incurious. In Barbieland, every day is a good day, and every night is a girls’ night. They imagine that the real world is just like Barbieland and that they have helped us solve all our “problems of equal rights and feminism.”
"Then come those pesky intimations of mortality. Later, a patch of cellulite appears on Barbie’s thigh. Her naturally high-heel-ready feet fall flat. These “malfunctions,” Barbie is told, are probably a result of someone in the real world playing with her too hard — and though she does not want to leave Barbieland to investigate, she really does not want cellulite. So with Ken and his Rollerblades in the back seat, and the radio blaring the Indigo Girls’ 1989 acoustic anthem “Closer to Fine” (a song Gerwig has loved since growing up among “hippie Christians” in a Unitarian church), she drives her pink convertible toward reality, expecting a hug and a thank you from the women of America. Instead, a haughty teenager serves her the whole brutal read: Barbie, the plastic personification of “unrealistic physical ideals, sexualized capitalism and rampant consumerism,” has been making women feel bad about themselves since she was invented."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/magazine/greta-gerwig-barbie.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230716&instance_id=97656&nl=the-morning®i_id=87407961&segment_id=139446&te=1&user_id=7bba122dbc8acf5289c69a5c9f2867a2
More from the NY Times Magazine article:
ReplyDelete"By 2015, after years of declining figures, Barbie hit its lowest sales volume in a quarter century. A psychological study found that after playing with Barbies, girls thought themselves less capable of various careers than they did after playing with a control Mrs. Potato Head. Mattel’s own findings were dire: Customers thought the doll was shallow, materialistic, too perfect and not reflective of the world around her. Mothers didn’t feel comfortable giving Barbie as a gift at a birthday party. There had never been such fear, among the people who safeguard her, that Barbie might be staring down irrelevance.
"So Mattel did something it had never needed to: It changed. In 2015, it began rolling out 100 different skin tones, hair textures, face shapes and eye colors, and four different body types for the flagship doll, which now comes in original, curvy, petite and tall. There has since been the introduction of a Barbie with vitiligo, a Barbie with Down syndrome, a bald Barbie and many others, plus a series modeled on inspiring women like Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou and Billie Jean King.
"As Mattel changed, it became clear that the world around Barbie had changed, too. Years of corporate feminism, girl bosses and girl power had defanged the second-wave critique; now feminists could look like anything, and some chose to look like Barbie. The classic blond doll remains a megaseller, but once she was inclusive and aspirational, appearing in animated shorts to tell young girls that overapologizing “is a learned reflex, and every time we do it, we take away from our self-confidence,” the whole high-femme thing wasn’t such a problem. Mothers started returning to the fold.
"‘The story of Barbie is the fight that’s been going on about Barbie.’
When Gerwig visited Mattel’s very pink headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., in October 2019 for “brand immersion,” she learned about these changes for the first time. She also learned that, unlike when she was a child, there were no longer friend characters in the Barbie Universe. “All of these women are Barbie, and Barbie is all of these women,” she remembers the executives telling her. The same went for Ken. “But this is extraordinary!” Gerwig remembers thinking. “This is a very high spiritual work that they’ve done! You can sort of stumble into poetry, that selfhood is contained amongst all these people.”
"She laughed when she told me this, but she was not laughing at it, which is precisely the tone of “Barbie.” When working on the sequence in which Barbie’s high-heeled foot falls flat, Robbie asked Gerwig how to play that moment: Is it a jolt? Is it painful? Gerwig told her: “You know that feeling where you’re like, ‘Huh, did I just get my period?’ Make that face.” "
The movie sounds kind of surreal and weird. I doubt if I would enjoy it. Not even sure the granddaughters would enjoy it, doesn't sound like a plot that would engage kids.
DeleteAnd I don't like idea that all the dolls are now "Barbie", that there are no longer friend characters. Just seems strange.
It doesn't sound like a kid movie, at least not targeted toward the little-girl audience that actually plays with Barbies. Maybe more for teens and adults. Seems Gerwig is not ignoring the feminist angst about Barbie dolls. And I would guess she'll elevate it to something more/deeper than a recitation of feminist talking points.
DeleteIf I am not mistaken, there already is a lot of video content for the little-girl Barbie audience segment.
LOL, Jim, I'm sure there is. There is no shortage of video content aimed at kids. And stuff to try and sell to them.
Delete"But she's really not the same doll, she has morphed and evolved since 1959, when she was first sold. In the early sixties, she was all the rage among the pre-teens. Everyone had one."
ReplyDeleteI guess I completely missed out on Barbie. I graduated from high school in 1960, went off to novitiate, then to college graduating by 1966. Having no brothers or sisters, and very little contact with my cousins during that period. I simply had very little idea of what was going on among teens or pre-teens.
My whole world consisted of classmates who were into Vatican II, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement. Pope John XXIII and Jack Kennedy, the Catholic President were our ideals. The Peace Corp was replacing the priesthood and religious life as the object of male Catholic idealism. By 1970 and the Kent State shootings much of that idealism had hit the reality that neither Catholicism nor America was going to change quickly. We all had to face the dull reality of job competition to make our way in the world.
Well boys didn't go in for Barbie much! Even Ken was more for the girls, a date for Barbie.
DeleteSeems like a lot of boys in the 50s, and probably 40s, were into western stuff. A lot of movies and tv shows then were westerns. Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger were some.
I think Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett had their moments, too.
DeleteJack - I was a young adult during a pretty unidealistic time - the 1980s. It was a different experience.
One of my brothers had a fake raccoon tail hat. I think that was Davy Crockett. Toy six shooters with caps were a pretty common toy too. I even had one. Sometimes we used to smash the caps on the sidewalk with a rock to hear them pop. Different times.
DeleteKatherine - we used to do the caps thing, too, including with the rocks. My theory is, the people who used to think it was fun to smash caps with rocks, grew up to be the people that spend hundreds of dollars on July 4th buying and shooting off their own fireworks now.
DeleteFor that matter, we used to have candy cigarettes. Good times.
I liked to compress a whole roll of caps with gas pliers. Then I'd block the ear facing the rock as I struck the rock with the pliers. POW! They all went simultaneously. Definitely headed for a career in weaponry.
DeleteThe caps trick was popular in my neighborhood too. I had forgotten candy cigarettes.We kids thought they were so cool - of course, they were priming us for the real thing during the teen years. For some of us, anyway. I smoked the real cigarettes from age 16-25. Very glad I quit!
DeleteThe westerns were very popular. My favorite was Maverick - I had a huge crush on the actor, James Garner. My only celebrity crush growing up. As I’ve mentioned before, about 2/3 of the people in my LA neighborhood worked for one of the studios. After moving to the mountains I was once spending a weekend with my best friend in the old neighborhood in LA. My friend’s mom took her somewhere and I was there alone. My friend’s mom was a widow who worked at Warner Brothers, which produced Maverick. She did PR and sometimes they shot publicity photos of actors by the pool in her backyard ( of a modest, 2 br, 1 bath house. Beautiful yard though.) we had to stay in the house when they did that and could only look out the windows. I remember that the actor who played Kookie of 77 Sunset Strip was one of them. I was probably 11 or 12. I answered the phone to take messages which led to one of the most exciting moments of my young life. When I asked if I could take a message, the man on the other end said “Yes. Please tell Dorothy that Jim Garner called and ask her to call me”. I practically dropped the phone before saying “Of course. Good bye”.
Great story, Anne. I watched Maverick and liked James Garner. Definitely an advantage to living in California. I had a crush on Lori Martin in "National Velvet", the early 60's TV series. If I'd gotten a call from her, I'd have gone catatonic. Good for you that you could still talk.
DeleteI remember National Velvet too. I guess it makes sense that boys had crushes too! I kept hoping to meet James Garner at their house, but it never happened. But I did speak with him in a very run of the mill phone conversation. It was a thrill. The Hollywood connections were fun at times. The uncle of one of my classmates at the parochial school was an adult Mouseketeer on Mickey Mouse Club. He was the artist. He came to our class once and drew sketches - including one of his niece- explaining how he did it. I used to see Annette at church, but never talked to her. I did briefly meet several old time Hollywood types - names that young folk like Jim might not even recognize. Jim, Annette Funicello was the most popular Mouseketeer. She made a number of “beach party” movies when she grew up that were popular with the teens.
DeleteOld time Hollywood types? They're the best. Seeing Annette Funicello in church. I would have liked that. I don't think I had a crush on her but she definitely incentivized me to watch the Mouseketeers. With Lori Martin, I'd be continuously checking the clock before "National Velvet" came on. Yes, boys get crushes, at least some of them. The boy actor who played a bully type in the series said he hated acting mean to her. He had a crush on her, too.
DeleteI always liked James Garner's persona. Highly likeable man. Happy for your memory.
Yeah, Annette was a little before my time. I grew up in the Raquel Welch era.
DeleteStanley, your comment about James Garner prompted me to see if he was thought to be a good guy to work with by others in the biz. Seems he was considered one of the very best. Although I did run across a Guardian article in which Garner said that Steve McQueen could be "a pain the ass" and was universally thought to be a prima donna. Oh well, nobody gets along with everybody at work.
I could see hot shot Steve being a PITA. I'm sure Mr. Garner was just being exact. I guess he was talking about working in "The Great Escape".
DeleteWell, Raquel Welsh was definitely not a Mouseketeer! I liked The Great Escape even though I don’t usually like war movies. I had forgotten about that movie.
DeleteStanley and Anne - yes, Garner's comments were based on his experience with McQueen in The Great Escape. According to Garner, McQueen whined that his part wasn't juicy and heroic enough, to the extent that they had to rewrite parts of the movie to accommodate him and his ego.
DeleteStanley - what is a PITA? I eat pita bread - ;) - but don’t know the acronym as applied to a person.
DeleteSorry. Pain in the.....
DeleteBtw, a review of the Barbie movie was in our local newspaper this morning. Three stars out of four. Rated PG-13.
ReplyDeleteSo - question for the women in our little group: do you think it's likely that Barbie's impossible figure has led to image problems for teens and tweens (and perhaps more mature women)?
ReplyDeleteThat these problems exist, and can cause profound damage to some girls and women, I am certain; just wondering if you think Barbie has contributed in some significant way.
I really don’t know. I see that this movie has garnered a whole lot of press attention. I’m enough older than Katherine that I pretty much missed the Barbie phase, which caught the attention of younger girls when I was in high school.. I never paid much attention to Barbie. I didn’t have daughters, and, as far as I’ve observed, my two young granddaughters (5 and 3) have no interest - yet. They are still Disney Princess fans. I do remember noticing when they introduced the first black Barbie though. I didn’t know that Ken and the sister and friends dolls were no longer around.
DeleteI think that Barbie is only one of several factors playing into the self- image problems of girls, and definitely not the most important of them. The media - social, and broadcast - are probably the greatest factors in exacerbating the problem. Katherine has more experience with Barbie since she was introduced when Katherine was the right age to be interested.
Anne, I think you are right that the fashion dolls are not the most important factor in the body image problems of young girls. To be honest other girls can be the biggest problem. Especially now with everything being overshared on social media. Body shaming is a form of bullying. I hope that kids are no longer expected to do communal showers after PE classes. I and my peers got around it by not doing it. We would spray on deoderant and get our hair just slightly wet. We had a male teacher, and he wasn't about to check things out further..
DeleteMy mom was somewhat concerned about the body image thing, which was why she was reluctant to let me have a Barbie. Now it's the little grade school girls who are the Barbie fans. When I was a kid it was the middle school ages.
I said above that it was other girls who were the problem, but boys can be too. Especially if they make remarks with sexual innuendo about breast size etc