Barbie's Newest Values
GLORIA BORGER
One of the most widely recognized figures in the world doesn't belong to an athlete, a rock singer, or
a movie star. It belongs to a doll. According to Douglas Kalajian, a reporter for the Palm Beach Post,
by December 1998 the number of Barbies worldwide was close to one billion in 14O countries. An
average of eight Barbies and friends reside in the home of each U.S. girl between the ages of three and
eleven.
Most toys peak and fade. Where have all the Cabbage Patch Kids gone? The Pound Puppies? The
Furbys? Barbie holds her own. She has experienced more careers and jumped into her pink convertible
in more outfits than we can imagine. What explains her enormous popularity? Some people blame
Barbie for creating an impossible standard of womanhood that no real woman can possibly achieve.
Is this doll responsible for fostering impossible expectations about the female body? Has Barbie's
figure caused young girls to resort to anorexia, bulimia, diet pills, and excessive exercise? Critics of
Barbie fault her and her parent company, Mattel, for contributing to a social climate that
overemphasizes looks at the expense of other qualities.
Taking such criticisms to heart, Mattel signed Barbie up for an extraordinary round of plastic
surgery in 1998. Her breasts were reduced, her waist was enlarged, and her face was changed just a bit,
all to produce a more "realistic" ideal. Just as she was undergoing her reinvention, however, Gloria
Borger wrote this December 1, 1997, U.S. News & World Report article declaring that Barbie's figure
wasn't ever the real issue in the first place. Borger is a Barbie owner, a contributing editor for U.S.
News & World Report, a CBS News analyst, and a frequent panelist on PBS's popular Washington Week
in Review. Here she argues a position that may surprise you.
I was all set to write something nasty about Iraq when a headline on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal trumpeted some news not to be disregarded: "Top-Heavy Barbie Is Getting
Body Work." And more. The headline also reveals this new line of Barbie dolls will have a new
face, too. "When Plastic Surgery Is Done, She Will Be 'Really Rad,'" which happens to be her
new name, as in "radical." All told, Barbie is getting new breasts (smaller), a new waist (wider),
and a different mouth (closed). The folks at Mattel Inc. hope that little girls will (a) find this
makeover awesome and (b) be struck with a sudden urge to replenish their collections.
Enough already. Every time Mattel tries to update Barbie, it turns into a PC nightmare.
Remember the Teen Talk Barbie who said, "Math class is tough"? Feminists revolted. The
wheelchair of Barbie's recently invented disabled friend, Share a Smile Becky, didn't fit inside
Barbie's two-story pink mansion. Advocates for the disabled protested. And now the toy maker is
changing Barbie's buxom, leggy figure partly out of "sensitivity" to those who say that girls grow up
wanting to look like Barbie, whose measurements would make it impossible for her to stand
upright in real life. The other (real) reason is so Barbie can look good in her new hip-hugger s.1
Don't get me wrong: I'm no Barbie hater. I once owned one, or ten. I believe it's a good thing
that Barbie is now available in an assortment of races, hair colors, and professions. And maybe
Barbie's upcoming effort at physical correctness will inspire a whole generation of female plastic
surgeons. Or patients.
But Barbie's bosom aside, let's be clear about something: Six-year-olds are not protesting that
Barbie is too glamorous or too tacky. It's the self-indulgent gen X-ers who complain that Barbie has
hurt their self-image. (Thereby forcing them into their nose-ring phase?) And it's the narcissistic (and
aging) baby boomers2 who still believe they determine every fashion and cultural trend — even
Barbie's style. (What's next? Barbie in Birken-stocks?3 Totally Cellulite4 Barbie?)
All of this, however, misses a more important point: It's not Barbie's figure that's the big
problem. It's her values. Whatever size blouse Barbie wears, she lately seems to be ordering most
of her clothes from the likes of Ralph Lauren, Bill Blass, Bob Mackie, and Christian Dior. These
designers are a part of a line of Barbie collectibles that are groomed to appeal to those upwardly 5
mobile baby boomer moms who thought Barbie looked too cheap for their children. "When I grew
up, I thought Barbie was middle class," says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. "I thought she was
like us." No more. Now Barbie is into labels, and she's not shopping at outlet6 malls.
Alas, Barbie has become a snob. While she was mod7 in the '60s and disco8 in the '70s, by 1980,
"she had the taste of a lottery winner," says M. G. Lord, author of Forever Barbie. "At the core of
this change is class." Mattel spokeswoman Lisa McKendall says this is rubbish, since these upwardly
mobile dolls — which start at about $65 a pop — are designed for grown-ups to play with. Please. What
about a recent ad for Bloomingdale's9 Ralph Lauren Barbie, which claims to be "the most sophisticated
Barbie ever." What adult is this aimed at? Barbie's makers also say they want more realism in their dolls,
and maybe that's what we're getting: You're never too young to become an elitist.
As the mother of young sons, I've never had lengthy wardrobe discussions. Boys into Power
Rangers10 do not feel the need to find shoes to match their laser guns. But wait. Like those girls begging
for Barbie's glen plaid Ralph Lauren handbag, my boys have shown an increasing fondness for Nikebrand items — shorts, shirts, and sneakers. Getting hooked early is what it's about, and we make it easy.
After all, insecure baby boomers teach their kids to constantly strive upward. Class warfare, once a
Democratic party line, is definitely not a boomer gig. Class coding is. And the marketers know it.
Of course, it's easy to overstate the impact of Barbie. She's a fantasy doll for girls, not a real role
model for women. (Some of us, however, await the Madeleine Albright 11 diplomatic collection,
featuring a secretary of state who finally knows how to accessorize.) As for the controversy over
Barbie's new body, there's one more hidden lesson for little girls who want to be big girls: No matter
how her measurements evolve, Barbie will always be a smallish size — as long as she's wearing expensive
clothes. In real life, designers reduce sizes all the time, making size-8 baby boomers feel like a young size
6 again. Surely they'll do it for Barbie, too.
EXERCISING
VOCABULARY
1. Identify the age groups who make up the populations Borger calls "the self-indulgent gen X-ers" and the
"narcissistic (and aging) baby boomers" (para. 4). What does her choice of adjectives tell you about how
Borger views each group?
2. What does an elitist believe? If you were an elitist, how would you react to the idea that every high school
basketball player on the school team should have egual playing time on the court?
PROBING
CONTENT
1. Why does Mattel say that it made physical changes to Barbie? What does the writer believe is the real reason?
2. Give an example of "a PC [politically correct] nightmare" (para. 2) already associated with Barbie. If Mattel's
intentions were to include more young girls in Barbie's world, how have the plans backfired?
3. Borger doesn't believe that the problems with Barbie center around her im possible figure. What does Borger
think the real problem is? What evidence supports her position?
4. Borger's sons have no interest in Barbies, yet Borger sees a certain awareness of class and status in their
preferences, too. How do her sons reflect the influence of carefully aimed advertising? What does this have to
do with Barbie and Borger's thesis?
CONSIDERING
CRAFT
1. Evaluate the writer's tone in this essay, citing a few specific sentences to support your evaluation. What
assumptions does she make about her audience? Would these assumptions be true of most people who
read US. News & World Report, the publication in which this essay First appeared?
2. What does Borger do to grab the reader's attention at the opening of her essay? What about the first
paragraph encourages you to keep reading?
RESPONDING
TO
THE
W RITER
To what extent has Borger accurately reflected Barbie's influence on our culture? How do Barbie's "values" reflect
our own?