Barbie the giant

You could be forgiven for thinking Barbie is going through some sort of mid-life crisis: she's turning 40 and all of a sudden she's acquiring a tattoo and undergoing plastic surgery. Of course, the people at Mattel won't refer to March 9th - the day she was launched in 1959 - as Barbie's 40th birthday. It's her anniversary, they say emphatically, no doubt because people might start to wonder how she's maintained her girlish looks for so long.

"They (Mattel) don't want her to seem like some surgically-reconstructed shrew," says M.G. Lord, author of the unauthorised biography Forever Barbie.

If you examine the Wonderful World of Barbie, with its endless array of high-fashion clothes, beautiful friends, and vast material wealth, it doesn't take long to realise that while it may look perfect from the outside, it's not that simple - not by a long shot. With Barbie nothing is ever simple.

Why? Because her story is so filled with conflict and intrigue. Because she's affected so many people (on average two Barbies are sold every second of every day) and because millions of adults remain adoring fans. She's disparaged by feminists, scrutinised by academics and is a favourite of artists. Now, after years of being the whipping-girl of critics, Barbie has emerged as a cultural icon of towering importance. She may be just an 11 1/2-inch piece of plastic but she can inspire a blitz of publicity normally reserved only for big-time "human" celebrities.

Last year, for example, when Mattel announced the doll was about to undergo some physical "updating", the news made headlines around the world.

The teenage to twenty-something girl, whose traditional proportions translate to a preposterous 38-18-34 on a human body, has been toned down for her 40th. Now Barbie comes with a smaller chest, thicker waist and smaller hips. She is, the company claims, more reflective of the little girls who play with her. Also, after all those years on her tippy toes (to fit high-heel shoes), the new Barbie has flat feet.

The change produced an outpouring of commentary in US newspapers, some favourable, most not. "Why not just give her a moustache, cellulite and varicose veins too?" opined one writer (a man) in the San Francisco Chronicle. Said another (a woman) in the San Jose Mercury News, who also didn't see the point in changing an old friend: "She's not a role model; she's just a shallow little moron with a lot of cool stuff who needs someone to dress her." So why mess with a good thing? The company says it's not bowing to critics, simply continuing a well-established pattern of updating its doll to change with the times. But they're sure not betting the house on the new look. Of the 120 dolls released this year, more than two-thirds will have the traditional body type and there are no plans to forsake it.

Barbie was introduced to the world in 1959 as the teenage fashion model. While her inventor was supposedly Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler, it turns out Barbie was almost a direct copy of a German post-war doll named Lilli, which was sold as a pornographic play-thing for men. The original doll was unsmiling with downcast eyes and a slightly removed sexuality. In those simple times, the doll came with the bare necessities of life: a black-and-white striped, one-piece swimsuit, cat-eye sunglasses, high-heeled mules and earrings. Barbie was not an easy sell back then because retailers believed she would not appeal to the target three- to 11-year-old market. "Barbie had a proletarian sex-industry body," says Lord. "Basically she looked like a little German hooker."

But Mattel bypassed that problem by investing heavily in television advertising - it was the first company to market toys directly to children on Saturday-morning TV. Mattel has gone on to market its teenage fashion model in more than 140 countries, and rang up more than $1.9 billion in sales last year - about one out of 11 dollars spent on all toys worldwide. (Actually, although Barbie was originally a teenager, the company is now decidedly vague on the question of age. Her various careers, including astronaut, doctor, and, in 1994, Presidential candidate, suggest she is now much older - but her age is now as imprecise as her career path.)

Girls in the US and Canada own an average of 10 dolls, compared with seven in the UK, and six in France and Germany. In all, after four decades on the scene, the lady shows not the slightest sign of slowing down.

What makes her so special? According to Lord, it comes down to two things: firstly, the endless stream of new products, identities and accessories that keeps the doll fresh. "Their (Mattel's) marketing research is like a surveillance satellite," she says. "They know what their customers want before the customers do." This year the range includes Generation Girl Barbie who sports a pink butterfly tattoo near her navel.

Perhaps more importantly, she says, the company "has blundered into a primal feminine archetype".

This, of course, is where the debate becomes interesting. For, though she is such a seemingly happy, innocent little thing, Barbie is also deeply materialistic, impossibly curvaceous and perpetually stuck in high heels. It's an archetype that doesn't please everybody.

She's also always been sexually spunky - no matter what the company says. Sandi Holder, who owns a Barbie speciality shop in northern California, is critical of the new lines of lingerie, including teddies, corsets and bras, marketed for Barbie. "I don't want my daughters to think that's all there is in life, you know, like greeting Ken at the door in a teddy." Actually racy, see-through, thumb-nail sized lingerie has been sold for her since 1960.

It is this female objectification - and the omnipresent perfect body that drives critics wild.

"Girls who grow up with a Barbie in their hands are growing up with a strange notion of what a woman should look like," says Marcia-Ann Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Ms magazine. "I think Barbie should come with a warning on the box: `This product could be harmful to your child's self-esteem'."

Not so fast, say her defenders; she is also a long-time career gal. As early as 1965, for example, she was an astronaut (though sometimes such roles are hard to take seriously - her 1985 space suit was fashioned from fuscia-coloured lycra). And some, like Lord, make a convincing case that Barbie is a model feminist who has been scape-goated for the enduring beefs of the women's movement.

"The doll is the first important role-model for girls aside from their mothers," she says. "She is highly sexual, unmarried and has been wearing career outfits from the very beginning. Her long-time boyfriend Ken, on the other hand, came later and has always been little more than an accessory. Barbie has never come in second in her world."

Lord goes further, depicting the multiracial Barbie (there are black, Hispanic and Asian versions) as an archetypal female goddess. As evidence, she points to the doll's tiny, unusable feet - like Venuses of antiquity whose feet "taper into unusable prongs". As such, poor Ken, with his "genital abridgement" is the ideal mate. "It makes sense that as a goddess she is ministered to by a eunuch priest," says Lord.

For most people such talk is just so much psycho-babble. An estimated 28 million adults, nostalgic about their childhood "friend", are still occasional buyers. Hardcore collectors number about 250,000 in the US and the lion's share of their purchases are of "golden era" dolls (those made between 1959-1970 before production was shifted out of Japan).

Serious collectors have been around for at least 20 years but the market has really only started to heat up over the past decade. There are regional fan clubs across the US and throughout the world and several glossy magazines are devoted exclusively to the doll. Mint condition NRFB (Never Removed From Box) dolls can command anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000.

And collecting, which has grown from a tiny cottage industry to an increasingly slick business in which top dealers generate sales of more $1 million a year, has not gone unnoticed by Mattel. Starting in 1994, the company launched a collectors' series aimed directly at the adult market. Mattel has enlisted big-name fashion designers including Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Bill Blass and Ralph Lauren to outfit their dolls at prices ranging from $80 to $125. Millenium Barbie, in a strapless gown with crystal jewellery and white, spike-heeled pumps, is the company's most expensive offering this year at $299.99.

Barbie sites have sprung up like mushrooms on the Internet. Many of those sites which once depicted "Barbie art", satire, or photos have either been forced to shut down, or to remove the offending materials.

The Web scene underscores a burgeoning high-art movement associated with the doll which apparently dates to the early 1980s and Andy Warhol's portrait of her. Gender bending is a common theme, with Ken frequently represented as gay or a cross-dresser and Barbie's pristine image distorted in every imaginable way.

New York artist Mark Napier began portraying Barbie in artwork more than a decade ago and says he stuck with the theme because of the passions it evokes. "People have a hard time separating the doll from what it symbolises," he says.

"The reality is she's among the world's most deeply embedded and powerful images - in the same league as Jesus Christ, Mary, Mona Lisa and Buddha. That makes her very interesting."

Undoubtedly that notion was behind the Barbie Liberation Organisation and its still anonymous leader, which five years ago went about destabilising US sensibilities by switching the voice-boxes of GI Joe and Teen Talk Barbie dolls. The group managed to place several of the rigged dolls back on store shelves and generate a lot of publicity because of the possibility that GI Joe would be heard uttering the words: "Let's go shopping".

And Barbie? "Vengeance is mine."

After so many years on top, who wouldn't have an attitude?