Part II. Barbie’s seamless transition into the 21st century
The first Barbies were physically made in factories in Japan, as a video clip from 1958 shows, using ‘a new technique called rotational moulding’. This, however, is one of very few in the exhibition about the dolls’ manufacture, and, as far as I could see, the only one that shows their mass production, as opposed to the more individual prototyping. Indeed, one of the most telling lacunae is the absence of any reference to the number of factories and of workers involved in making Barbies today, or any details as to where they are based, how much they are paid, and what their conditions are like.
Instead of the workers, later vitrines display, in addition to the dolls themselves, some digitally modelled heads; many items of clothing; accessories, including houses and cars; designer’s sketches; packaging; and memorabilia. Not to forget a small but disconcertingly clean and well-groomed collection of Kens, ranging from the slightly balding ‘Mod Hair Ken Doll’ (1973) to the frankly creepy ‘Earring Magic Ken Doll’ (1993). And hair made of synthetic Saran fibre running the spectrum from black to brown, red to blonde, which is displayed both behind glass and as the shade of a large light fixture, which dangles its tresses down from the ceiling just over visitors’ heads. Except in the video of the Japanese factory, however, I did not spot a single naked doll of either sex; the nearest was a copy of a diagram of the original Barbie mannequin, with its elongated legs.
The brief references to the assemblage of the Barbie from its component parts at the beginning of its life may lead the viewer to consider its end – even if, judging by the exhibition alone, or by the Barbie film, you might think that it was deathless. Unlike with some toys, such as Lego or building blocks, the process is irreversible: a doll dismembered cannot easily be put back together again. It would be interesting to know how many tonnes of Barbie plastic, old heads and hair and shoes and dresses, were thrown out each year, and how many of them ended up in landfill or at the bottom of the ocean. Mattel has, ‘in response to the global climate emergency’, produced a collection of four ‘Barbie Eco-Leadership Team Dolls’ (2022), whose bodies and clothing are made from ‘90% recycled plastic’. However, it was unclear from the exhibition whether any of its other dolls were recycled or recyclable.
The consumerist aspects of the Barbie brand are acknowledged most overtly in two sections that display the various houses, cars and fashionable outfits designed to accompany the doll. This, the exhibition argues, reflect the changing ideals of what is ‘desirable’ – as it were, the dream of the perfect, and perfectly conventional, American life. As the displays show, fashion has always been a defining element of the idea of the Barbie; this appears to be continued today in the numerous Barbie ‘fashion dolls’ sold by Mattel.
A strange contrast to the consumerism angle is provided by the ‘Barbie Goes into Space’ and ‘To the Moon and Back’ displays. As the caption points out, the first ‘Astronaut Barbie’ was produced in 1965. Perhaps ironically for the cultural influence, or lack of it, of Barbie, the first woman astronaut, Valentina Tereshkova, was sent into orbit by the USSR in 1963, but it would take until 1983 before the launch of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride.
Also on display is a video in which the astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian woman in space, is shown floating in the International Space Station next to a commemorative Barbie doll in her likeness, ‘answering questions aiming to inspire girls to pursue careers in STEM’ as part of a joint project between Mattel and the European Space Agency in 2022. Unfortunately, no information is provided as to how Mattel achieved such an extraordinary PR coup, and one can only imagine the shenanigans behind the scenes. (How much did that bit of extra weight cost the ESA mission? Did Mattel have to fight off competition from Lego and Disney?)
In the section entitled ‘The Way We Play’, the introductory text notes that ‘Barbie has been through numerous incarnations since she was launched…including more than 260 careers and a wardrobe reflecting six decades of fashion. She was and is an introduction to adulthood for generations of children…’. It makes a plausible case that, from an early stage, at least some versions of the doll showed girls that they could be more than just mothers. A 1963 Barbie board game, ‘Keys to Fame’, gives girls the opportunity to imagine a reasonable selection of careers, if still of their time, from nurse and teacher to stewardess, ballerina and ‘movie star’. Since then, Barbies have been dressed as police officers, computer engineers, scientists, doctors, builders and soldiers. A Barbie has been a presidential candidate ‘in almost every election since 1992’, although American society has taken a while to catch up. Did Kamala Harris have a Barbie? – one wonders. At any rate, if she becomes president, she will surely be immortalised in plastic.
One of the points repeatedly hammered home by the exhibition was the increasing ‘diversity’ of the types of Barbie designed by Mattel over the decades. The first African-American doll, Christie O’Neill, was produced in 1968, although the first such Barbie did not arrive until 1980, along with a ‘Hispanic’ Barbie; an ‘Oriental’ or ‘East Asian’ Barbie followed one year later. The range of different types of shapes of face and skin colours to reflect different ethnicities has substantially increased since then, as has the variety of Barbie’s clothing. The section entitled ‘The Changing Face of Barbie’ displays 24 Barbies dating from 1965-2019, each in its own vitrine with a different coloured backdrop. It is arguably the most attractive section in the exhibition, both because it shows each Barbie as something closer to an individual character, albeit idealised, made up and interminably shiny, and because it allows the viewer to see the doll’s chronological development.
Recent additions are a stocky or (euphemistically) ‘curvy’ Barbie; a pregnant Midge (Barbie’s friend); a Barbie with Down’s syndrome; a Becky and later a Barbie doll in a wheelchair; and a ‘Barbie with vitiligo’ (as it is advertised on Mattel’s website), with patches of depigmented skin. ‘These dolls have reflected a wide range of ethnicities, varying disabilities, and cultural contexts,’ proclaims one caption – although another one nearby, somewhat inconsistently, claims that, ‘rather than assigning prescriptive ethnic or social “identities” to individual dolls, Mattel have chosen to leave this interpretation in the hands of the consumer… This approach also reflects our contemporary understanding of identity as more fluid…’. Is a doll’s meaning a matter for the girl playing with it, or for the responsible grown-up corporation to provide for her? The writers of the text seem undecided.
A placard on ‘representation’ claims that designs of the Barbie have evolved over its seven-decade lifespan in order ‘to better reflect the realities of our diverse, pluralistic society’. Looking on the Mattel website at comments posted by customers of ‘diverse’ Barbies (assuming they are genuine), it does seem that some children, and their parents, very much appreciate such dolls, especially if someone they know has suffered from a condition like vitiligo, blindness or Down’s syndrome. To that extent, such dolls can bring comfort to people who might otherwise feel forgotten.
Yet at the same time, one cannot help feeling a little sceptical about the exhibition’s emphasis on this aspect of Barbie, and the heavy-handed didacticism and lack of irony with which it is expressed. Lack of irony means lack of critical reflection – yet the museum text almost slavishly supports the line taken by Mattel’s current advertising of its ‘Fashionistas’ collection as ‘the most diverse doll line’. As Nicolas Houssin, Mattel’s VP for Marketing, put it in a LinkedIn post, ‘the Barbie Fashionistas series is the most inclusive doll line on the market, continuing to set the standard for diversity in the toy aisle and allowing more children to see their world reflected through play.’ Such models, he claims, have been created ‘to ensure doll designs accurately reflect the community they are designed to represent.’ That may be so. But is a ‘community’ such a fixed category? Why should a doll have to be a mirror of the child playing with it? And is diversity, as the approach taken by Mattel and the Design Museum seems to imply, about anything more than superficial characteristics and box-ticking?
In addition to Cristoforetti, there are several Barbies modelled on real-life people, including ‘women…recognised for their social activism’, including (without further specification) ‘LGBTQ equality’. These include Billie Jean King and Wilma Mankiller, an indigenous north American chief, both of whom are clearly inspiring historical women. However, the exhibition sets these next to a doll of ‘the award-winning actress’ Laverne Cox, without mentioning that the latter is transgender. Surely it would harm no one to add this factual information to the caption; as it stands, it is misleading to put Cox, without clarification, among ‘inspiring women’.
The final room of the exhibition is devoted to representations of Barbie in the mostly American media, and ones which are both favourable to Barbie’s image and promote its ‘diversity’ narrative. There are pictures of covers with Barbies by Time, Vogue Italia and Bloomberg Businessweek, as well as heavy referencing of Barbie on Instagram. There are also a few mementos from the Barbie film (2023), for which Mattel Films was one of the co-production companies. While the film might be said to satirise some of the problems raised by the youthful, supermodel-like body and celebrity lifestyle of many incarnations of the doll, the fact that Mattel supported it suggests that it is not considered a threat to the brand. For some critics, like the journalist Khadija Khan, ‘the movie comes across as a deliberate effort to reintroduce the Barbie brand with fresh traits like morality and self-realisation in a bid to clear Mattel of all criticism, pay lip service to 2020s feminism – and advertise new Barbie dolls.’
In contrast, a cultural reference that does not fit with Mattel’s narrative, and is therefore conspicuous by its absence, is ‘Barbie Girl’, the hit 1997 song by the Danish-Norwegian band Aqua. Quirkily satirical, it depicted the title character as ‘a blonde bimbo girl in a fantasy world… You can touch my hair, undress me everywhere; imagination, life is your creation.’ Mattel unsuccessfully sued the band’s North American record label on the basis that the song damaged the reputation of the Barbie brand, in particular by associating the doll with ‘sexual and unsavoury themes’. Sex anything to do with Barbies? You must be kidding. After all, the word does not appear once on the Mattel website – or, as far as I could see, in Barbie®.
LINK
- Girl in a Corporate World – Barbie®: The Exhibition, Part 2 - September 20, 2024
- Girl in a Corporate World – Barbie®: The Exhibition - September 6, 2024
- Clerkenwell Design Week - May 24, 2024
