Rant #2,608: Barbie Girl

I guess that it was inevitable that I would get to National Women’s History Month, even though I don’t believe in having specific months to celebrate our citizens in one way or another.
 
But I am going to talk about the month, which just happens to be this very month, in sort of a tangential way, and talk about an element of the month rather than the celebration itself, which I find just as silly as having Black History Month .
 
I mean, if you want to celebrate a certain part of the population, why relegate it to a single month? Celebrate things as they happen, not pounce on people during one single month like what certainly happened during Black History Month this year, which made February, the shortest month of the year, into what seemed to be the longest month of the year.
 
Anyway, with that explanation under my belt, I would like to talk about something that has become a bit of a symbol for Women’s History Month, both positively and negatively depending on several factors.
 
Today, in 1959, Mattel came out with the first Barbie doll, and with it, came lots of slings and arrows as well as a lot of praise for the doll, certainly one of the greatest toys of all time … and perhaps the most controversial one too.
 
The doll was created by Ruth Handler, and as the story goes, she saw her daughter, who was named Barbara, play with paper dolls rather than the then-standard baby dolls that most little girls played with back then.
 
It spawned an idea that perhaps a real doll could be designed that allowed girls to play with what amounted to an adult doll, and after a trip to Paris, where there was such a doll already in circulation, Handler came back to the U.S. and updated her prototype for the doll, and named it Barbie after her daughter.
 
It premiered at one of the major toy fairs in New York City on this day in 1959, and it remains one of the most popular toys—if not the most popular—ever created, still generating more than $1 billion in sales each and every year.
 
But it has come with controversy almost from day one.
 
First of all, its voluptuous figure has angered some people for ages, being somewhat unrealistic for a human being to have a natural figure like Barbie has, and some people said that young girls playing with Barbie would have unrealistic images of themselves as they grew into womanhood based on the way Barbie was configured.
 
There were other charges against the doll over the years, including that it put the doll into impossible to duplicate in real life situations; the lack of corresponding dolls to emulate all races, creeds and national backgrounds; and, of course, the price of the doll’s accessories—including clothing—which approached the dollar figure of real clothing for human beings.
 
But Barbie has seemed to adapt to whatever negatives it was up against, and honestly, I can’t see a six year old girl really caring about the doll’s figure or how much the accessories cost.
 
The doll was so successful that there were spinoffs—the most successful of which was Ken, because Barbie needed a man in her life, I guess—and many copycats and rip offs of the concept.
 
And, of course, in this day and age, Barbie has come to fit the times. She is now something other than a stewardess, she is as diverse a toy as there is on this earth, and her measurements have been lessened so as not to get adults so upset about that aspect of the toy anymore.
 
Again, as if little kids really cared.
 
Barbie has spawned her own cartoons, TV series, and movies, songs, and even after the toy’s 62nd anniversary today, there is no ceiling to the success of this toy.
 
So that is my little paean to Women’s History Month, telling you a little about a doll that some truly love, others revile, and most people just go with the flow on.
 
My sister had her Barbie dolls and many of the accessories, and she also had some of the knock-offs too.
 
I don’t think it really gave her body image issues, it just made her a typical American girl who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s.
 
Heck, my sister was born the same year as Barbie debuted! (Don’t let her know that I told you this.)
 
And she played with the classic Barbie, the dolls that go for thousands of dollars today on the Barbie doll market but probably cost about $5 way back when.
 
Even back then, adults were treading on kids’ lives, taking away their childhood with every protest against Barbie, and there have been so many through the years.
 
All the while, Mattel has made a mint on this doll, so in the end, it was all just extra publicity for the toy, and you know what they say, any publicity is good publicity … especially when it is free.
 
Good luck to Barbie in her future, and I can only imagine what the doll will morph into as the next generations decide what they are going to be outraged about.
 
Let the kids play!
 
And let them be kids, for crying out loud!