"Wanna play Barbies?" was a frequent refrain of my childhood; so since it is Barbie's 50th birthday today I thought I would check in as I have for all my other childhood friends' big five-oh birthdays. As a fellow 50 year old I thought we might commiserate about our middle aged lives in all it's complexity; sandwiched between kids and parents, careers and dreams, wrinkles and sagging parts; hotflashing our way through boring meetings and never ending car pools.
I guess I was not entirely surprised to find Barbara Millicent Roberts as perky as the day we first met. She is still a long legged 6/3.75/5 without a grey hair in sight. If anything she looked younger at 50 than she did when I first opened her box. And while she remains childless and never could get Ken to commit to marriage, her many careers have given Barbie a varied and interesting life. Who knew that such a small doll could be the subject of so much study, debate and derision.
When Barbie was introduced, at the American International Toy Fair in NYC on this date 50 years ago, she was the first adult doll. Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, was inspired by her own daughter's role playing using adult paperdolls and Ruth named her creation after her daughter. Intially unpopular with toy designers and buyers, both because of her adult figure and untested toy status, Barbie soon became a sought after toy. Prior to Barbie's introduction, girls had baby dolls but no adult doll with which to act out their imagined adult lives. Now girls not only had an adult doll but one with houses, cars and fabulous clothes.
The original Barbie was clearly an adult woman. While her figure has been the subject of intense study, it is easy to forget that her face was, as Barbie collector Joe Blitman described, "the face of a 40 year old woman who's seen a lot of action". Over the years Barbie's sideways glance has been straightened, her waist widened and her heavy makeup and older face made more youthful. The Barbie I played with 40 years ago is not the same one my own daughters played with 10 years ago. Like any fifty year old, Barbie's look has evolved over time. It's just that Barbie also hasn't aged.
Much has been made of the physical image of Barbie. I have read everything from a normal sized woman with these proportions would not be able to stand up, to her body fat is too low to have normal periods. I doubt that we will ever really know how much Barbie helped set the standards of physical beauty and how much she simply reflected the times in which she was created and recreated. It remains interesting to me that despite all her many careers and new roles many still focus exclusively on her figure. In this single regard she might actually reflect the plight of woman everywhere, still too often judged and remembered for their looks and not enough for their accomplishments.
Happy birthday my old girlfriend and welcome to middle age.
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