Driscoll

Girl Culture
An Encyclopedia
Volume
1
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Edited by
Claudia A. Mitchell
and
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data
Girl culture : an encyclopedia / edited by claudia A. Mitcherl
p.cm.
and Jacquerine Reid-walsh.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-313-33908-0 (set : alk. paper)
ISBN:978-0-313-33909-Z (vol.
1 : aik. paper)
ISBN: 978-0-313-33910-3 (vol.Z: alk. paper)
1' Girls-United States--social conditio;s-Encyclopedias.
2. Teenage girls-United States!-oacg]-co1litions-Encvclopedias. I. Mitchel, craudia. II. Reid-\rar;h;lr'.0r.tt.,", usr-
HQ798.G523
2008
305.235'2097303--dcZZ
ZOO7O4O5L7
British Library Cataioguing in publication Data is available.
copyright o 2008 bv ciaudia A. Mirchel and
Jacquerine Reid-walsh
A11 rights reserved. No portion of this book may
be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent ofthe publisher.
.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: ZOO7O4O5|?
ISBN: 978-0-313-33908-0 (Set)
978-0-313-33909-2 (Vol. 1)
978-0-3 13-33910-3 (Vot. 2)
First published in 2008
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, r0Testport, CT 06ggl
An imprint of Greenwood publishing G.orri, I.r..
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z3g.4&!lgg4).
,
;
1.
10987654321
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Barbie Culture
The "Barbie" dol1 was introduced by Mattel, Inc., in 1959. Although the doll was initially
considered innovative for being a "teenage" doll, it was not truly representative of a
$own-up infant flgure; in actuality, Barbie was no more teenage or adult than any other
doll. Fashion dolls, including three-dimensional ones, had been popular with youth for
centuries. For her part, Barbie was modeled to some degree on the famous German
comic/burlesque doll "Bild Lili"-but Barbie also represented a set of discourses about
adolescent girlhood and will always be referred to in the feminine, rather than neurral,
pronoun. Although the f,gure of the girl caught between childhood and womanhood, and
positioned in that way as both an ideal and a problem, developed its recognizable
contemporary form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its visibiliry
dramatically expanded with new and more widely disseminated forms of popular culture
after World !7ar 11, with the teenager continuing as one of the dominant icons of the
United States in the 1950s. Barbie appeared in the wake of this massively popular concretization of the idea of the teenager, the teenyboppeq and the teen.
Unlike previous incamations of the fashion doll, Barbie was crafted for long-lasting
play, for which her fashion accessories would always be secondary to the doll herself. In
this sense, she resembled the new post-\ilorld War II consumer, around whom proliferating commodities could endlessly circulate. Unlike the previously more popular baby dolls,
Barbie was not a game about motherhood, but a game about gender in a broader sense,
where-like the ideal of the teenage girl-she is a participant in the debates about gender roles that emerged after the women's suffrage movements and amid ongoing changes
to women's labor practices.
If Barbie is thus a product of political and popular cultural changes that reached a
degree of institutional stability in the United States of the 1950s, she is also a product of
technological and transnational economic changes following \Uorld War II. She was
always a global product in some sense. Although flrst seen at the i959 American Toy Fair,
Barbie's mass-produced form was molded in Japan. Even more signif,cant, the history of
Barbie's production parallels the expansion of transnational commodity marketing that
established nor only the manufacturing, distribution, and sales of the dotls themselves, but
also the gender norms Barbie spoke to. Barbiet American-ness is not just about maps of
ethniciry dominated by idealized whiteness, and maps of gender dominated by commodiry
circulation on rhe one hand and the open-ended process of youth consumption on the
other, but also about factories. The raised plastic on Barbie's body traces a history of
exploitation and "modemization": from "Made in America" to "Made in Japan," and then
on to Hong Kong, Korea, Thiwan, and ultimately China. From the beginning, Barbie was
produced in durable plastic from advanced niolding t&hniques in a compact and thus
portable 11.5-inch formar. Each of these elements of Barbie's design brands her as some.
thing unique-something that could not have worked at any other time. Most important,
Barbie's changing form (as much as her changing representation of gender) demonstrates
that if Barbie is a product of her time, she is a product not just o{ 1959 , but of oll the times
and places in which she is and has been produced.
40
Barbie Culture
TIIE BARBIE DOLL
Ruth Handler, the central frgure in Barbie's design, claimed that she based the idea for
on what she saw in the doll-play practices of children. Apparently, much of this
Barbie
.
interacrion was overlooked by others-probably because of the dominance of baby dolls
on the toy market. Handler noticed that girls were using dolls "to reflect the adult world
around them. They would sit and carry on conversations, making the dolls real people.
I used to watch that over and over and rhink: if only we could take this play pattem and
rhree-dimensionalize it, we would$rave something very special" (Lord 1997,p.30). However, Barbie was never merely a three-dimensional paper doll. Important design dimen'
sions separate her from earlier fashion dolls, given that both the static and the movable
parts of Barbie were assembled in such a way as to maintain a glamorous pose, however
she was positioned. This design not only was complex and modem in a technical sense
bur was also a visualization of the fashion model that relied on the everyday recognizabil'
ity of glamorous movie poses.
Akhough it is crucial ro rhink about Barbie's form when talking about the uses and
meanings of the dolls, it is equally important to recognize that Barbie's highly successful
form, despite its apparent homogeneiry over decades, has never been fixed. Changes to
Barbie began almost immediately, when her heavy makeup was removed in 1961. Barbie's
face alone can be used to map a series of telling changes to the image Barbie is designed
ro convey. Beginning in 1971, with Malibu Barbie, the doll began to look straight ahead
rarher rhan coyly to one side; and with the mid-1970s superstar face mold, Barbie gained
as a perrnanent standard feature a dazzling smile rather than cupid's-bow lips. But across
these changes to the standard face, we can also trace the proliferation of minor variations.
By the superstar period, we can clearly see the diversification of Barbie into a standard but
gradually changing "playline" and its variation in multiple supplementary novelty marketing
lines. The same trajectory can be seen in Barbie's bodiiy form, where some changes are
short-lived-for example, the introduction in 1970's "Living Barbie" of iointed ankles,
which allowed the doll to wear flat shoes as well as high heels. Others, such as bendable
knees and a swivel waist, became part of the standard playline model. The history of
Barbie's physical form is one in which gradual design changes mark out the expected
paramerers of Barbie play, all of which tend toward making her liGstyle play more flexible.
Such variations are always something more than marketing gimmicks. The twisting
body that made the sixties Barbie more groo\ry may have remained, even though her
{lexibie elbows have come and gone. And the bizarre narrative of adolescence in 1975t
,,Growing Up Skipper" (you wind her arm, and she grows height and breasts), or the various mechanical gimmicks that allow Barbie to have facial movement or be atmched to
various accessories, are even more transient. But Barbie's variations are always statements
about the dominant and possible forms of femininity at a given time. W-hen standard
Barbie's exaggerated attached eyelashes were replaced by less pronounced, painted-on
eyelashes, this signaled, in part, changes to the role of makeup in dominant images of
female beauty as well as changes io the presumed normative relationship between childhood play and adult gender roles. Even novelry changes to Barbie say something about
dominant and emergent gender narrarives of the time, as with Busy Barbie's (1972) "holding hands" for grasping her accompanying TV, record player, suitcase, and a ray with
glasses, reflecting fresh access to newly diverse material goods marketed at adolescents.
Changes to Barbie's hair are exemplary in this regard. The move from ponytail Barbie to
"bubble cut" Barbie is a story about the displacement of the "teenybopper" by the "mod"
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as an icon of cool girlhood, and a subsequent model like "Growing Pretty Hair Barbie,'
(1971) allows girls to play games with the way different hairstyles comprise different-
however partial and Eansient-modes of femininiry.
WE GIRLS CAN DO ANYTHING, CAN'T WE BARBIE?
The Barbie doll was never onlv a "fashion doll," but always a set of opportunities for
adding to an image of girlhood. Originally, Barbie appeared with her trademark striped
swimsuit, a fashionable ponytail, and optional extra clothes and accessories. In i961 the
Ken doll arrived. Then, in 1963, best-friend Midge was introduced, followed a year
later by a little sister, Skipper. By that time, Barbie had clearly left her role as rhreedimensional paper doll behind. Fashion continued to be crucial to Barbie, bur somerimes
she was a girl with her finger on the pulse of the latest style, sometimes there was no more
than a fashionable undercurrent to some other role she was portraying, and sometimes
fashion was her profession. lUith each change, Barbie became part of a social network referencing her future, and games about the future perhaps comprise Barbie's most important
accessory. If Barbie's form and Barbiet production have changed, they pale in significance
next to Barbie's constant renegotiation of ideals about girlhood. Barbie's form, Barbie's
narrative, and Barbie's material accessories are all caught simultaneously between images
of sexy womanhood, images of adolescent experimentation with gender and identity, and
the open-endedness of child's play.
The importance of specific iife narratives for Barbie has waxed and waned. For a time
in the sixties, she even had parents and a last name (Barbara Millicent Roberts); but the
story of "Swan Lake Barbie" can hardly be reconciled with that of "Barbie in Hawaii" or
any of the various career Barbies. There are obviously sound commercial reasons for the
casr of characters who are all linked to Barbie, but the types of relationships involved in
Barbie's characterized accessories are not arbitrary. Barbie has had a brother and no fewer
than flve little sisters (from Skipper rn1964 to Krissy in 1999), and occasionally "cousins."
She has had even more "friends," both boys and girls, either visually and culturally similar to her or different from her, and sometimes with relatives or other life narratives of
their own. She has, then, a girl's social networks. It is especially important to understanding Barbie's ongoing changes that Ken's role in her life is sometimes crucial and
sometimes peripheral. 1r.2004 plans were in the offing to make Ken entirely obsolete. But
he is still around. And although Ken is only another characterized Barbie accessory he
also stands in for the necessity of the boyfriend accessory to ideal girlhood.
The Ken-and-Barbie question thus becomes part of the debates about the kind of role
model Barbie presents that have always been part of Barbiet metamorphosis. Barbie has
become an apparatus, in a sense, for thinking about what girls can and should do and
want. The contentiousness over 1991 "Teen Thlk Barbie"-speaking, among 270 other
"teen talk" lines, "\7anna have apizzapatyl" and "Math class is tough!"-exemplifies this
function of Barbie. On the one hand, this Bzirbie apptared at the same time as a report
critical of inadequacies in girls' education and was criticized by women's groups; on the
other hand, the culture.jamming group calling itself the Barbie Liberation Organization
emerged to circulate instructions for swapping Barbie's voice box with the vengeance- and
vioience-laden voice box in Hasbro's talking GI Joe. Both groups used Barbie to mark out
a place for public conversation as much as they pointed to the effects Barbie might be
thought to have on girls and the dominant images of girls in popular culture.
4t
42
Barbie Culture
'
The impact of feminism on gender norms in the United States has continually been
mirrored in Barbie, who has always responded to changing ideas about gender and its
implications. Both Prom Queen Barbie and Astronaut Barbie, as well as all of the "forcibly
iiberated" Barbies produced to counter Mattel's presumed public image, are part of the
Barbie girl. Barbie is composed of contradictory images of girls'experiences, pleasures, and
aspirations. Although she began as a fashion model, Barbie soon rook a rum as a fashion
designer (1960). She's been a flight attendant (1961 and i966) and a pilot (both com-
mercially and in the Air Force). She's had many incamations as a reacher, since at least
1965. She's been a nurse (1961hand a number of doctors of different types since 1973
(including a surgeon and an Army medic). More than once she's been an ice-skater
(beginning in 1975) and a ballerina (first in 1961), but she's also been a football player, a
gymnast, an equestrian star, and a NASCAR driver. Sheh been a club singer (1961) and
a rock star with her own band (1987), and she has reincamated various pop stars, like
Beyonc6 Knowles (2006). As noted earlier, Barbie has been an asrronaut-indeed, far
more often than one might expect (1965, 1986, and 1994). She's been a police officer
(1993) and a fireflghrer (1994), as well as a presidential candidate (1991) and even a
president (2000). However, Barbie has usually been a more down.ro-earrh working girlpresented as everything from an office girl to an executive and back again to a "'W'orking
\7oman," complete with laptop (1999).
Long before the "everythinggirl" slogan of the Barbie !7eb site, Barbie participated in
a discourse on the ongoing expansion of girls' possibilities. Although Barbie as a mode of
consumption raises a range of questions about the influence of producers over consumers,
the Barbie !7eb site has also been an important meeting place for consumer subversion
since the feminist critiques of the late 1960s. The expansive contradictions of Barbiet
careers and the marketing of a public, active, and more independent life for Barbie in the
wake of the impact of feminism on girls' expectations are crucially important elements of
why Barbie became so famous; Barbie was not only resilient in the face of feminist critique; she also managed to accompany the emergence of feminism as a powerfirl component of the public sphere and attempted to embrace feminist concems about girlhood's
interaction with gender norms and identities. Feminism and Barbie have thus become
interwoven in the cultural economies that circulate ideas about girlhood. Thus the com.
mercial Barbie slogan of the mid-i98os, "\7e Girls Can Do Anything," can be redeployed
as the tide of a sma1l-circulation art and text zine-We Girls Can Do ,\nything, Right
Barbie?-produced by ten U.S. hlgh school girls in 1997. And it can be done without in
any way being outside the reach of girls' Barbie play because the conrinual making over
of Barbie's lifestyle has become entrenched in critical debates about gender roles.
EVERYTHINGGIRL
The dominance of Barbie among girls' toys is not consistent, and changes to Barbie
often resuit from the efforts of Mattei to keep her popular. It's crucial to Barbie's relation
to girl culure that Barbie does not embody and does not wear the fashions of her girl
users. Barbie enters girl culture as a form of aspirational marketing, presenting ways in
which the tween girl can use, produce, or respond to images of adolescence and womanhood that are offered to her from many different sources-sources in addition to Barbie.
To no one's surprise, some of these other sources are also doils, because Barbie has many
imitators and descendants. At the present time, Bratz dolls come closer to Barbieh success
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Barbie Culture
than any previous altemative fashion doll. In comparison to Barbies of recent years, the
Brau giris may indeed look like, as they claim ro be, "The only Girls with a Passion for
Fashionl" because they appear to have a passion for just that one thing. Bratz dolls are
modeled, as are the franchised accessories for the girls who piay with rhem, on Barbie's
claim to a strong identification between girl and doll-an idendfication with the doll as
a girl rather than as a girl's toy. The legal action between MCA Entertainment and Mattel
that is taking place at the time of this writing signals the importance of the Bratz dolls as
competitors of Barbie by its evident parallels with the eariy 1960s lawsuits between Mattel
and other companies seeking to capitalize on Barbie's success. In the popular media as
well, Bratz dolls have begun to inherit some of Barbie's notoriety, although at present they
lack Barbie's capacity to address a long history of debates about and images of femininiry.
In fact, Bratz dolls may never have that capacity because they are directed less toward the
future of their girl users than ro a more immediate set of real-life possibilities.
Although countercultural Barbies may be the products of artists, children, and culture
jammers, Barble's mainstream has become increasingly complex, in part because she has
come to address very diverse audiences. Barbie was always a multimedia success and has
long had a loyal transnational audience, keeping pace with the popular technologies circulating images of her and other "girls" in the expanding field of popular girl culture. She
was sold by television from the outset, advertised during The Mickey Mouse Club and thus
directly to girls in 1959. In 1965 the Mattel Club, whose membership soared in the wake
of Barbie's popularity, claimed to have had more members than any other club for girls
except the Girl Scouts. And despite predicted or actual declines in Barbie's sales and popularity (which do not necessarily mean the same thing), and with whatever amount of
longevity, Barbie's history has been one of media and medium diversiflcation. Across
DVDs, computer games, dolls and their accessories, clothing, and other items for Barbie
fans to wear and use-from penciis to surfboards to NASCAR helmets-Barbie aims to
keep pace with the changing norms, fields, and practices of girl cuiture.
In the early twenty-first century in the era of \Ueb 2.0, what "Barbie" encompasses is
sold as "everythinggirl." On Barbie.com, a pixel-based version of her now-iconic figure,
adapted to look more lifelike, proclaims, "Hi, Barbie Girll" She is represented in a "home"
space dominated by old and new media-from pop-star wall posters to computers. The
cross-media expansion of the Barbie franchise is spectacularly evident here, where "girls"
can click on online Barbie movie samples, watch previews of Barbie computer games, set
up Barbie.narrated "home pages," play interactive online games in which they dress or
siruate Barbie as they wish, and identify and circulate themselves as Barbie Girls. Barbie's
alignment here with computer know-how as much as fashion looks and iess historically
specific ideals for Barbie continues the long trajectory of keeping Barbie up-to-date with
the latest trends in girl life. Nevertheless, even in online formats, it is lifestyle games that
still dominate. However technically different it might be to backyard dressmaking or
bricolage Barbie homes, dressing Barbie online and reordering her living space continues
-i
a set of certainties about girl play and Barbie play.
Networks of discipline and powerful ideologies of gender, body, and self are inseparable
from questions of taste and style for today's modem girl. (Although this is also true o{
todayh modem subject-citizen, the girl consumer has long been seen as exemplifying the
entanglement between self and commodities.) On the one hand, her long success has
inspired commentators to insist that Mattel has "correctly assessed what it means to a
little girl to be a grown-up" (Morgenson 1991, p. 66), and on the other hand she has
43
44
Barbie Culture
focused ongoing public and popular debate about girls'body images and social expecrarions.
Even before the institutionalization of feminism and its enormous impact on Barbie's role
as an aspirational figure, Barbie was never a stable, closed image of mature womanhood.
She always stopped before reaching any closure on what it was she could aspire to or
,
achieve. She always stopped, for example, at being a bride: Barbie may have had a
"steady," but she was never Mrs. Ken, and her life was the life of an (as yet) single girl.
Ken was always an accessory who functioned more as an optionai narrative anchor for
Barbie than as a doll in his own right; he was an accessory much after the sryle of Barbie's
houses, cars, or horses, and never as crucial as her clothes.
!,
FAB FASHION LOOKS AREI{'T JUST A GIRL THING!
As the "most popular woman for sale in all the world" (Lord 2004, p. 300), Barbie now
extends from shampoo and bikes for Barbie girls (rather than Barbie dolls) to doggy beds
and the "Hot Tub Party Bus" for the Barbie girl's Barbie. But if Barbie computer and
online games, for example, still center on the assemblage and the makeover as ways of
compiling a complete picture of a girl's hfe (or of crucial elemenrs of a girl's life), in the
menus of Barbie.com a crucial change to the Barbie universe is evident. More subtly positioned between the frames of everythinggirl's options are links that indicate Barbie has
other audiences than those who want to play at idendfiring with Barbie's ideal life. The
"Collector" menu tells a rather different story about the nou of Barbie than does the
reproduction of the same Barbie site and same Barbie games in languages other than
Enghsh under the menu item "Global Barbie."
One of the most complicated elements of Barbie's iconic roie, particularly in the last
rwo decades, is the way her representation of girlhood pushes at rhe limits o( and sometimes cleariy exceeds, girl play at being a girl. Mattei's BarbieCollector.com presents an
entirely different version of "The Barbie Fan Club" from that produced by Mattel for girls'
consumption. Although the two sites are not entirely distinct, as the quiz assessing how
well you know Barbie history on Barbie.com attests, the portal for Barbie.com is focused
on girl-doll play, while the portal for Barbie Collector frames Barbie as quite a different
link between gender and commodification.
W'hereas Barbie on Barbie.com needs things,
and is associated with successful commodifrcation of gender in multiple ways that all articulare gender through commodities, including Barbie herself, Barbie Collector positions
Barbie as a history of commodified femininity-from new lines indexing that history such
as the Hollywood glamour dolls sryled on old movies, to reproductions of old Barbie dolls.
Barbie collection relies on reference to an archive of images of femininiry rather than
on any activity that would intervene in the role of these dolls as indexing an archive.
That is, whether understood
as memorializing ideal femininiry or as commercial (bank.
able) oblects, the collector's dolls lose value with any arrempt to modify them, even by
handling, whereas the Barbie of girl-doll play gains its value precisely from the possibility
of being used. Most relling, perhaps, is that the Barbie collection locates Barbie as able to
speak to a history that Barbie herself does not need to have been part of. Although "sleepytime Gal Barbie Doll" reproduces a 1966 costume (despite, as any avid collector would
note, introducing some variation on the 1966 doii itself), "Barbie Doll Leams ro Cook" is
a "vintage repro" doll only in the sense that she reproduces the gesture toward idealized
past femininity. This Barbie was never produced before, with her "set of adorable cooking
accoutrements-including a 'toaster' and 'roast' slices-[that] add a little bit of humor
:'!
ii,
Barbie Culture
and a whole lot of fun to this truly whimsical ser!" (BarbieCollector.com). She is
a 200?
reference to a vision of 1960s femininity that Barbie would never have participated
in
during that period. Barbie did have outfts suited to domesric chores in the skiies, and
there was even-although not presented as glamorous images of womanly Uf"-an iaeatization of domestic labor in the early Barbies, with aprons and kitchenalia. But there
was
never a Housewife Barbie in this whimsical sense.
Barbie collecting was always part of Barbie play, as the cast of Barbie characters and
the
range of Barbie manifestations anticipated. If Barbie is placed on a pedesralishelf by
collectors, then she is equally unattainable for the girl invested in girl.doll play, b,rt the
unattainability of Barbie works very differently for girl play than for collectors. In the
19BOs, with the Barbie doll's original fans reaching their second or third decade, and early
Barbie dolls now old and rare enough to classifii as both collectibles and oldwares, M"tt.i
responded to the rise of Barbie collecting with a porcelain doll collector line. Although it
is important to recognize that Mattel, from the outser in 1959, always catered to *d,rlt
consumers as those who might buy Barbie for children, since the 1980s Barbie has been
explicitly marketed in two directions: to tween girls, and to consumer groups for whom
either the ideal of the tween girl who loves Barbie or the ideal of the adolescent girl Barbie
represents for tweens is highly desirable. Even when consumed nostalgically, as an erotic
oblect, as a historical text, or as an object for feminist and other cultural criticism, Barbie
represents girls playing with gender.
READING (ABOUT) BARBIE
If no other object marketed as a childrent toy has generated as much media inrerest as
Barbie, it is because she has become an icon not only of the importance of what girls aspire
to-whether that is to have a dream date and then a dream home, ro be impossibly slender, or to be president-but also of the irresolvable openness of girlhood itself. Thus
Barbie has become a standard for scholarly discussion of the relarions berween popular
culture, dominant ideologies, and childhood development as much as she has always been
a centerpiece for the popular media. No product for girls, no dominant toy of any year, no
feminist account of popular culture, and no transnationally marketed representation of
the body can entirely escape its relation to Barbie in the \Testem pubiic sphere; nor can
any contribution to intellecrual inquiry about girls, girlhood, feminism, embodiment, or
commodity culture entirely avoid Barbie.
In academic scholarship about Barbie, there is both widespread concem about the
effects of girls playing with Barbie and equally widespread enjoyment in the long spectacle of the Barbie archive; and this notion not only i.s consistent with the concems of rhe
mainstream media-if those concems are articulated differently-but also mirrors the
two dominant modes of Barbie consumption. Concem over Barbie play rests on the presumption that gender play is more telling and influential on identity development than
other kinds of games, on the simultaneous presumption dhat girls are more vulnerable to
such influence than boys, and on Barbie's special claim to identiflcation between girls and
dolls-that girls playing Barbie are indeed "Barbie girls." The reasons why the "action flgure" G.l. Joe is not the same klnd of doll serve as an apt summary of these arguments: It
doesn't matter what G.I. Joe wears, and his "career" or other lifestyle choices are never in
question. Plus, there is no sense of there being dramatically different ways of being a
G.I. ioe. G.I. Joe references a specific type of action in the world as well as secondary
45
46
Barbie Culture
player interacts with and
identities associared with that action. A doll is something the
or hacking to pieces' An action fig'
does something to-whether dressing up or nurturing
built into it'
;.* ;;1""#, a summary of a set o? r.tior* circumscribed by the narrative
mav seem
Barbie
']',J;fi1;g-.ir. aorr. with G.I. Joe is a counter'naffative' Although
and
declared
her
by ideal and normative femininity, both
to be simiiarly
ro
diva
to
"o.rrr.r1.r"J
worker
plr.a-.* lives are far more open, from president to fairy to of6ce
disembodied
--S;i;i#ip head for grooming games'
plav or
o,, Br.ili" ."r,dl lqyrrd eitler psvchologicai evalr-ution of Barbie
Barbie's audiences, and
cultural studies ,r-rrtyri, ot,ie intirplay b"t*..n Barbie, Mattel,
Barbie is often historiographically
Barbie's culrural contexts. Recent clltural analysis of
inde-
play than on the
i.n"lr"a, but the emphasis is less on assessing the dangers of Barbie
participate in the diversifiterminacy of Barbie and Barbie play. ln thls way, such critics
For example' Erica
cation of'Barbie that has arisen .otr.-po.r.iiy with such scholarship'
her book Barbie's
in
and object
Rand discusses rhe openness of Barbie as a sexual image
the
1970s to divest
in
Mattel',s move
Qurq Arrrrrones. crucial to this, Rand argues, is
for her age
context
parents, and a clear
Barbie of all narrative fixity, including he. .,.arn",
(1994)
of "eth'
anaiysis
or,,developmental" position (1995, pp. 58-64). Anne Ducille',s
from
arises
that
complexity
nic" Barbie friends foregrounds an important example of the
standard'playline
this claimed lack of #ity, considering how "colored" but otherwise
the umbrella Barbie, who could
Barbies like Colored err".i" (1967) r,i... di.plr."d by
ethnic
ethnicity at ali and stil1 be "Barbie," ,rrd ,h.t supplemented by specialist
il
contra'
and
diverse
";ymolds. W'hereas Rand srresses the openness enabled by Barbie's
iody
to eschew the stability
dlc,ory idenrity, Ducille sees Barbie diversification as an attempt
of contempo'
into Bii". The two authors, then, agree that the key characteristic
built
rary Barbie is her multiPlicitY.
are certain kinds of Barbies
Barbie,s variation dolr, of .orr.re, have real limits. Not only
and "Princess Pink Barbie"
made, involving choices about whether "Veterinarian Barbie"
like "Feminist
;;;;;, Barbil in the way Mattel wants, but certain Barbies are not made,
and
predictions
of
a set
Barbie" or "Pregnant Teen Barbie." Each of these choices enmils
they
if
even
play,
pr"r.riptlor* atout Barbie play. Some kinds of play are not "Barbie"
be a girl, and she must
i.rrrolrr. Barbie dolls. In o.d". to remain Barbie, Barbie will always
to the edge of a stabinor cross the important sexual boundaries stretching from puberty
across the broader range
lized image of *rt rr. womanhood. But whether rn do1l lt-av.or
of knowing and
practices
with the
of what now comprises Barbie, Barbie is a territory filled
home
leisure-packed
girl. From the 1959 slogan "Barbie, you're beautiful" to the
;;;g ; ;*.Vthinggirl,"
stretching
girlhood,
Barbie negotiates images of ideal and acrual
prg.lf
iil ia",
,hi.h
of th. glii to encompass past, present, and future possibilities and exploring
girl culture.
bo.d"rs and which desires simultaneously defne girls and
Further Reading
cubtne cnd culanalTheory'
Driscoll, catherine. (zooz). Girls: Feminine Adolzscence in Popukn
New York: Columbia University Press'
Reid-Walsh' eds. Seuen
(2005). ..girl.doll: Barbie as Puberty Manual.,, In C. Mitchell and J.
Going on Seuentcen. New York: Peter Lang, pp'
:
Zl7-234'
Merchandising of DifferDucille, Arrre. (1994). "Dyes and Dolls: Muliic"ltutal Barbie and the
ence." Differences 6, no. 1, 46-68'
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Morgenson, Gretchen. (1991, January 7). "Barbie Does Budapest." Forbes, 66f{.
Rand, Erica. (i995). Barbie's Queer Accessvries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
CATHERTNE
DRlscolr