Barbie's Vagina Monologue

I Love Vintage Barbie,the classic years:1959-1972. I have always loved her, its something I associate with my Grandmother who bought me my first doll and my cousin who actually owned a Ken. You may think I’m nuts or disagree or you may have your own unique perspective on the doll. I applaud this as this is part of Barbies feminine mystique.
Why Barbie? I’ll tell you why, because for me Barbie is a perfect image of a woman in world of theatre, the theatre of life that makes all the world a stage. Barbie has played more roles than any actress alive and has come to life in the hands of children and adults for more than forty years. Her face has changed with the times and only recently has her body been modified from that overtly sexual threatening object first made of molded plastic in 1959. It is completely true that she was modeled after the German BILD Lilli, a trashy flashy character from a dramatic comic strip aimed at men.
Ruth Handler (possibly Americas first woman CEO) created Barbie with her husband after watching her growing daughter(Barbara) become bored with baby doll play and become fascinated with paper dolls that she could dress up in grown up styles.Handler spotted the Bild lilli doll on a family trip to Europe. Altho it was marketed for the traveling salesman to carry on his cars’ dashboard, it was the right size and shape to dress. The doll was redesigned as BARBIE with her engineer husband and manufactured in Japan where Barbie got her first Kabuki-like makeup and strong features. The clothes were finely crafted with couture detailing and style and were more valuable than the dollv itself because they were more expensive. Like an actress of the late 19th century it was her clothes that defined the roles she would play. She was an astronaut before NASA was even training women, a fashion model , a teacher, a designer, all in a myriad of perfectly accessorized outfits.
Personally I was attracted to Barbies body and her perceived persona in a lot of ways. First it was what she represented: haute couture, independence, sleek sophistication and sex appeal. ... and then you took her clothes off. Vintage Barbie taught me everything about accessorizing that perfect outfit. Barbie has done it all and so is a bit of a know it all. I like this about her but I don’t think she knows she doesn’t have a vagina. Perhaps, she would argue that she is really just one big vagina as she is literally and figuratively a hollow receptacle for your imagination and fantasy. aware of its meaning? No vagina or nipples for Barbie, just 40DD torpedo tits, a roughly 18 inch waist and 32 in hips? No problem with body image there and she's at least 5’9 or ten. I distinctly recall a Mattel accessory included with slippers, rollers, silk pjs and a flannel robe, and a tiny BATHROOM SCALE permanently set to 110 pounds, paving the way for bulemics and anorexics every where. Barbies body as a means of expression. What else does she have besides her wardrobe and the input of a fertile imagination.How she dresses helps to define her which is great for outward specifics but in the bigger picture, we have no idea who she really is.
This is where I can tell you what I don’t like about Barbies image today. It is completely trampy She is almost exclusively blonde and wears basically mtv slut fashions. I can’t stomach the bent arms and hot pink boxes. Yuck!As a potential Mom, I don’t think they're appropriate for girls under seven.I do like that over the years she has become more independent of Ken. In the classic era I like to collect from, 1959-1972, Mattel marketers tried to ploy girl children with a boyfriend for Barbie. He turned 40 march 13th. Ken couldn’t keep up with those knockout tits and eventually became just another accessory for Babs. The dolls creator originally wanted Ken to be as anatomically tasteful as Barbie, the mound is whats left leaving most consumers to wonder how his masculinity might be in balance with barbies overt femininity. My childhood collection never included a Ken Doll which leaves me to speculate about the development of my own sexuality and partnership history; reasons for never marrying a man after two engagements and having lived intimately with a woman. Perhaps we could never figure out who was Midge and who was Barbie in the relationship. They share the same body and yet have distinctly different faces.Pretty SCARY! Mattel went even further with doll body sharing somewhat later when Barbies little sister Skipper and her playmate Ricky came on to the scene, to cross gender boundaries.Their prepubescent bodies are identical.Sure we’re all created equally and are innately female as developing fetuses, then as we are born and part ways we must decide if we are biologically female, compulsory heterosexuals, a myth, or the product of a social relationship, or even if we exist at all! Barbies biggest task is to explore the relationship between feminism and femininity by attempting to bridge the gap. I for one think it is possible to be feminine and feminist.
To put words in her mouth,I would venture to say that Barbie is a liberal feminist in her belief of liberal humanism. We are humans first and gender and race define us secondly.This makes it possible to minimize the differences between men and women. It is the individual that takes precedence over the group. It is Barbie who takes precedence over Ken.
If Barbies image is a perfectly balanced struggle of feminism and femininity it translates from doll image to human woman that for most women there is a desire for wholeness, fulfillment and complete perfection and success. Whether a woman desires femininity or autonomy in her accomplishments, this possibility of having it all is illustrated in the projections a child or adult collector as they might attach them to an 11 1/2 in high piece of molded plastic. Mattel has long been overly protective of their trademark and her image, regularly trying to control the imagination of an international market. The average American girl owns 7 dolls. 2 people every second somewhere in the world buy a barbie. There have been enough dolls produced and sold to circle the earth 3 and a half times.
. She is a powerful image of a woman in theatre, as she is just who you say she is at a given moment.
If Barbie pisses you off, this in and of itself is her lesson to not judge a doll by her face and body, her outwardly image is not what she ultimately stands for. If ever there was a dolls soul, she is celebrity to me in the way say Jodie Foster is, a celebrity cause fatale. Which is to say she is private yet accessible through the quality images she portrays as an actress. She is leaving us to wonder about her sexuality as she became a single parent. Let us wonder and leave her alone.
Despite her deficiencies Barbie is many things to many people, she is art, pop culture, kitsch, camp, mass culture, fashion and a sexist notion of unyielding femininity. NO VAGINA! NO PROBLEM!