Barbie goes to Hollywood

Barbie history is being made in Toy Story 2, in which the curvaceous doll appears on the cinema screen for the first time, in a "guest appearance". And what does she sound like? Bubbly, perky and a bit squeaky - like you would expect of a babe with a plastic larynx.

Sporting a dizzy, party-girl attitude and wearing a sexy outfit, Barbie plays a sociable tour guide who smiles till it hurts. The world's most famous doll comes across as considerably less intelligent than Mr Potato Head. With her giggly, dumb-blonde demeanour, Barbie knocks the socks off Buzz Lightyear, the computer-animated character that engendered a toy-buying frenzy when he was introduced in the original Toy Story in 1996. Clad in her intergalactic mini-skirt and cap, Tour Guide Barbie inadvertently rescues Buzz Lightyear when she just happens to drive by in her zippy 4x4. It's not a major speaking part, and Barbie is certainly not a pivotal character; she has only three, short scenes. That makes it the perfect debut role for a well-endowed, 40-year-old bimbo with absolutely no personality.

The company refused to allow Barbie to appear in the original Toy Story because they thought the character written for her - a super-feminine action hero - was too strong. But they reconsidered when Toy Story became the third-highest-grossing animated film of all time, behind The Lion King and Aladdin. Mattel sold 1.6 billion dollars worth of Barbies last year, but it is also aware that girls are abandoning Barbies at younger and younger ages in favour of PCs, video games and other diversions. In response, the company has introduced a Barbie PC and licensed her image on a range of lifestyle, clothing and publishing products.

The key to selling all this stuff is product placement - through which manufacturers subtly, or not so subtly, advertise their wares in films. A product to the core, Barbie fulfils her marketing ambitions in her Toy Story 2 role. Already, the positively reviewed sequel has broken all box office records in the US, grossing $200 million in the two months since it opened, which must be gratifying for Mattel, which cannot but see the writing on the wall about Barbie, who seems an unlikely post-feminist role model for little girls, especially with icons like Lara Croft snapping at her heels.

But I should be careful what I say about Barbie; Mattel is protective of its eternal ingenue. It is suing the publishers of Adios, Barbie, a collection of essays by female writers about body image and self-esteem. Only one of the 26 essays "Klaus Barbie, and Other Dolls I'd Like to See", referring to the Nazi war criminal - actually talks about the doll's impact on culture and image. Many feminists believe Barbie sets up unrealistic expectations for young girls and encourages them to value appearance over achievement. One worried parent, Mary Lanier, wrote in the New York Times recently that "people who are confounded by the bizarre patterns of early sexual maturation and related behaviours might want to look at the mind-body connection between hormonal stimulation and the onslaught of sexual imagery in the media aimed at everyone, including children. Kiddy fashion, movies, toys, television, Internet pornography and even many cartoons invite children - often directly - to indulge in both childish and adult sexual fantasies and to be coiffed, made up, dressed and prepared for sexual activity." Give us a break, Mary. Barbie is not designed to be provocative, believes clinical psychologist Maureen Gaffney, whose own daughter Ellie (20) - now a medical student at Trinity College, Dublin - spent her girlhood playing with a beloved collection of Barbies that were a very important part of the household.

"From the age of three on, the business of whether you are a boy or a girl is going on, and children will raid the world around them for anything that will help them sort out that gender issue," says Gaffney. Barbie is suitably exaggerated, because in play, little girls exaggerate female behaviour in a process of "over-learning" what it means to be an adult. If a parent chooses to ban Barbie - or any toy that appeals to a child's peer group - they should discuss it with the child carefully, Gaffney advises. You are more likely to do harm by depriving your child of Barbie than in giving it to her.

Yvonne Jacobson, a psychosexual therapist with the Marriage and Relationships Counselling Service in Dublin, says that she has never come across a case in which a childhood preoccupation with Barbie had a malign influence on the development of her adult sexuality. "The important part of the child's sexual development is around having opportunities to talk about and explore issues that they have questioning about and having someone who is not afraid to answer those questions," she says. In the ideal world, she adds, mother would have time to join in with the Barbie play and talk about what it is like to be grown-up.

And that is exactly why Barbie was invented. According to Mattel folklore, an American woman, Ruth Handler noticed her daughter Barbara playing with paper dolls and imagining them in grown up roles. Handler realised that dolls on the market at the time were all baby dolls, and that there was a need for a doll that would inspire little girls to think about what they wanted to be when they grew up.

The beauty of Barbie - as Handler realised in 1959 - is that she is blank and primed for a little girl's projections of womanhood. In her various guises - of which there are hundreds - Barbie has been a successful businesswoman, a member of a rock band, a Women's World Cup Soccer player, a presidential candidate, an airline pilot, a dentist, and an astronaut. Mattel is also marketing Barbie at thousands of adult collectors who are willing to pay 150 dollars for a single special edition or limited edition doll. Among the list of collectable Barbies gaining in value, are Barbie as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Barbie and Ken in Phantom of the Opera, and Barbie in elaborately dressed fashions designed by Oscar de la Renta and Nolan Miller.

It is intriguing that grown women, in the 21st century, would remain enamoured of a doll that is desirable yet neutered, beautiful yet silent. It says something about how confused we all are, as women experiment with new, varied and often simultaneous roles almost on a daily basis. In a world where women's roles are being reinvented, Barbie remains, for many girls and women, reassuringly malleable.

Toy Story 2 opens on February 11th