Look Ma, new Barbie!

To be fair though, Barbie has always changed with the times. Born in Los Angeles in 1958 from the fanciful minds of Ruth Handler and her husband Elliot, who noticed their daughter Barbara playing with adult dolls, the original Barbie was a dewy-eyed blonde with a pearly smile and an hourglass figure that — to subvert Raymond Chandler’s shopworn expression — could cause a cardiac arrest in a yak. Translated intoreal terms, Barbie had heart stopping dimensions of 38-18-34, vital statistics that were hitherto conceived only in the fevered imagination of the sculptors who worked on the temples in Khajuraho, Konark, Belur and Halebid. Or in the Go-Go bars of Downtown Manhattan.

But for millions of American girls between 3 and 11 who took Barbie under their wings and vice versa, those were heartbreaking figures. As girls tried to achieve the impossible, terms like anorexia and bulimia entered the medical lexicon. Barbie’s face changed twice. In 1967, she became a slim-cheeked, pouting model of the swinging ’60s with a direct gaze instead of the shy, downcast look of the original; in 1977, she got her now classic blonde bimbo looks with a wide smile and heavy make-up. She even went ethnically diverse in 1980, becoming Hispanic and Black, to cater to the multi-racial market (as much as becoming sensitive to the times).

But the anatomical, er, imbalance, remained. The hourglass breaking figure never changed. CamillePaglia, the American feminist academic, called her “one of the dominant sexual personae of our times”. She certainly outlived and outlasted Marilyn Monroe.

Now finally, it’s a-happening, it’s a-happening. In the angst-driven, grunge-riven, etiquette-ridden ’90s, Barbie is undergoing a C-change. Gone soon will be the blonde bimbo look that made her a Goddess of Little Girls.

After two months of research across six countries involving girls between four and 10, Barbie is going to change according to the expectations of the ’90s.

In only her fourth avatar in 38 years, she will sport a new look that will involve a fuller face, shorter eye-lashes, a higher forehead, a closed mouth… and a crucial restructuring of the embonpoint. No figures have been mentioned, but it would likely be a more realistic and balanced version with smaller breasts and thicker waist.

Of course, the company which makes Barbie — Mattel — has always been sensitive to the criticism about the unreal vital stats, but it maintainsthat is not what caused the change. The company says the redesign was necessary because Barbie needed a newer look which would allow her to wear more contemporary fashions such as hip-hugging jeans.

“The product’s target audience girls aged three to 11 are looking for a hipper and more physically realistic version,” the company said.

Surveys show that a typical American family with a girl child has an average of eight Barbies. Some collectors and the occasional cry baby or spoilt brat have more. Says Barbara Yale, a World Bank staffer: “As for those of us named Barbara, we had scores. We got at least three on each birthday.”Barbie is by far the most popular toy in the world. Every two seconds, a Barbie is sold now — somewhere in the world. Since her birth in 1959, a billion Barbies have flooded the world one for every five persons in the world — making a staggering $ 1.6 billion for its producer Mattel in 1996 alone.

Now, with ever newer versions and ethnic and racial diversity, the numbers arebound to grow. So too controversy. While many feminists have said the original Barbie is a poor role model for little girls and attacked her blonde bimbo looks as anodyne, the newer versions too have their critics.

They panned the talking Barbies introduced earlier in the decade for saying things like “Math class is tough” and “Can we ever have enough clothes?”In a game called Barbie’s Dream Date released in 1992, each player tries to make Ken (Barbie’s long standing — and long suffering — boyfriend) spend as much money on her as possible.

The latest spats centre mainly around ethnicity. Already, there is angry buzz about the year-old Puerto-Rican Barbie, which sold spectacularly in the American commonwealth, but attracted critics on the mainland. Reason? They say the light-skinned, raven-haired Barbie looks too Anglo, the Spanish dress smacks of colonial oppression, and there is too little mention in the packaging of US imperialism. But other Puerto-Ricans are happy with her mulatto complexion,almond eyes, fat nose, thick lips, and most of all, her ethnic dress.

Either way Mattel is laughing all the way to the bank. The hoopla over the facelift and the controversy over ethnicity and race is winning it more publicity than advertising will buy. And with Barbie spreading her wings far and wide now, generations of stock holders will bless the ageless woman who was described by her biographer (yes, she has one!) M.G.Lord as “a toy designed by women for women to teach women what for better or worse is expected of them by society.”