Throwback Thursday March 1/2018

BARBIE Celebrated her 40th birthday.

Published Women Newsmagazine Dec. 1999

Barbie celebrated her 40th birthday this year, quite the accomplishment for a toy, especially a twelve inch plastic doll who sports an unrealistic figure and has always worn too much makeup. Given her age she is holding up remarkably well, her breasts are as firm today as they were four decades ago.

Her original wardrobe still fits her to a T; there has never been a trace of cellulite dimpling her thighs nor have stretch marks shadowed her torso. She’s always been one of the lucky few who could sport any hair color, length or style and look good. She has never experienced the joys of motherhood, nor have life’s trials taken any toll on her perfect complexion. Barbie has been blessed with eternal youth.

YUCK! She’s the girl that the rest of us love to hate.

In a brief news bulletin on the radio last week it was reported that an original Barbie doll sold for seven thousand dollars. American dollars, no less. More than three thousand times her original price, and enough to finance some fairly major cosmetic surgery. Barbie was a good investment for someone! This news floored me, but after my disgust subsided I was inspired to dig out my old Barbie and pals.

A ‘saver’ by nature, I have several boxes of great junk secretly stashed in a closet behind the skirt of my 30 year old grad dress. Things I was unwilling to hand my children to play with given their lack of reverence for their own toys. Mine was a generation less indulged; the products of frugal parents, we appreciated things differently than our children do. I sometimes feel my children, although lavished, have missed out on some of the finer things frugality has to offer. The fewer the possessions, the higher the esteem in which they are held.

I located Barbie, Ken and Skooter without much trouble, They were all still wearing their original bathing suits and were carefully packed in their original boxes. They had been much loved in my youth, but I was one of those weird kids who put her toys away.

Although my doll does not fall into the ‘original’ category, she is very old nonetheless and has aged quite nicely. Her hair is perfect. I think I have repressed a pre-Barbie memory of combing the ponytail out of a doll’s hair, only to discover there was no hair beyond the outer rim of tresses (a shocking discovery for any child). I never brushed my Barbie’s hair. Her shoes are gone; I vaguely recall the sensation of flattening the plastic high heels in my mouth – nostalgia, like teeth pushing through the yellow paint of an HB pencil.

Ken is his ever-rigid self, dressed in swimming trunks and cabana top, his plastic yellow hair plastered to his perfect head. I never knew quite what to do with him when my friends and I played Barbie. He was always just there. He never had much of a wardrobe. Even when Barbie was dressed to the nines, poor ol’ Ken had to go to the prom in his swimsuit.

Skooter was a bizarre addition to my Barbie family. As a doll, she never really caught on, billed as being Midge’s little sister, and Skipper’s best friend (Midge being Barbie’s best friend and Skipper, Barbie’s little sister). Skooter cost a dollar less than Barbie’s immediate family. I never purchased any little sister fashions for her, instead resorted to carefully crafted Kleenex frocks. Her freckled nose and plucky grin still brave her inferior status.

These were the friends of my youth. The plastic imaginary world they created pales beside the more exotic, computer animated, talking gizmo on the market today. Now, Barbie is forty … she is a classic. She has seen the comings and goings of countless outrageously priced toys and never blinked. She’s just sucked it in, stuck ‘em out, and marched herself into the playrooms of three generations of little girls. And now the great-grandmother of them all is worth seven thousand dollars… go figure!