impact Episode 48: Living Barbie

beauty is fleeting well for most of us in our next story we meet a 50-year-old woman who's just as gorgeous as the day she was born Barbie you're beautiful you make me my barie doll is really someday I'm going to be exactly like you till then I know just what I'll do barie beautiful barie I'll am you it starts out being a piece of plastic and it really represents where we've been for the last 50 years to me she's somebody who can do anything and everything in the entire world she can be a stewardess she can be a princess she can be a movie star she can be on the red carpet you know all these different things that Barbie can do and I think she's Super Woman Barbie represents a lot of things to different people who look at her some people see Barbie as an amazingly successful Global brand to others she's the a subject for a work of art to Children she's the figure onto which they project their adult selves standing 11 and 1/2 in Barbie first took the the World by storm in 1959 scantly dressed in her signature Black and White swimsuit and high heels Barbie was the first doll to represent adult women by age 50 Barbie has earned a net worth of more than $3 billion and leaps off toy shelves into the arms of children every 3 seconds but behind her lavish hair and Flawless features are hidden secrets her connection to a German sex doll her unrealistic proportions and her struggle to remain politically correct despite the animosity some might feel toward her others Center their lives on Barbie making her the most sought-after woman in the worldie small and so petite her clothes and figure look so neat her dancing outfit rings the bell at party she will cast to spell purses hats and gloves glow and all the gadgets G the door Barbie dressed for swim and fun is only $3 her lovely Fashions range from $1 to $5 look for Barbie wherever dolls are sold Barbie the teenage fashion model first hit toy shelves in 1959 but the story of Barbie's creation began years before she appeared on the scene back around 1950 when Ruth Handler the co-founder of Mattel she was observing her eight or nine-year-old daughter playing with her friends playing with movie star paper dolls and she looked at this and she thought wouldn't it be great to three-dimensional IE this and turn it into a toy she was told by the research and development people probably one person at that point Matel was very small that it couldn't be done coste effectively so she sort of put the idea on the back burner 6 years later Ruth Handler came across an 11 and 1/2 in doll in a shop in Switzerland her name was Lily now Lily was a comic strip character in Germany she was sort of a gold digger not quite a call girl but definitely lived off the generosity of other men this is she who um who was based on a character in in um in a sort of downscale German newspaper called the built saitong which was sort of like our national Inquirer I mean Lily was you know a Floy I read um three or four years of cartoons and nearly everyone the punchline involved Lily swapping sexual favors for money the one I like the best shows Lily in the apartment of a of a female friend and she's holding up a tiny newspaper the built saong I believe to cover her naked body and the caption is we had a fight and and he took back all his pres according to Lord the Lily doll was created as a pornographic gag gift for men Lily ads stated she was the star of every bar and the mascot for your car it was the kind of thing you would give as a party gift as a joke and she was dressed in either usually casual way or sometimes ski wear sometimes evening gowns or whatever and she was very voluptuous and very hardl looking actually in her book lord wrote that Handler purchased three dolls and gave one to her research and development team the original Barbie doll premiered at the New York Toy Fair in 1959 she was named after Ruth Handler's daughter Barbara and Beed a striking resemblance to the Lily doll it was not an immediate success with Buyers they thought it was too salacious too voluptuous Sears wouldn't even carry it one of my favorite exchanges involves a mother looking looking at different versions of the doll and she says well you know I might give my daughter the one in the wedding dress but her eyes bug out not the one in the sweater Handler's company discovered that kids loved Barbie but mother hated her so Mattel decided to Market directly to children they were the first toy company to buy advertising time on television they spoke directly to children without parents as an intermediary and that step radicalized the toy industry speaking directly to Children was critical when the Barbie Doll came out by the summer of 1959 young girls were going wild for Barbie but something was missing Ruth hords started out with this idea of making the doll a blank slate in terms of Personality what they discovered over the first couple of years is that kids were writing to her in record numbers and saying what they wanted they wanted her to have a car they wanted her to have a house they wanted her to have jobs other than being a teenage model but most of all they wanted her to have a boyfriend which kind of surprised Mattel uh cuz they really had never thought of the idea of doing a boy doll it all started at the dance Barbie the famous teenage fashion model doll by Mattel felt that this was to be a special night and then it happened she met Ken and somehow she knew that she and Ken would be going together just like Barbie Ken was named after the Handler's son Kenneth having both dolls meant that Mattel would develop a new advertising strategy it was huge success and what they realized at that point is they needed to give her more of a personality Define her more she had a boyfriend suddenly she was from Willow Wisconsin she had Parents two years later she had a little sister then she had a best friend mij Barbie's success continued and by 1965 Mattel's sales exceeded $100 million her secret was adapting to current Styles and Fashions and during the mid 1960s Barbie fashions began changing her best friend mij disappeared from toy shelves to reveal new dolls with hipper Styles if you take a look at the original Barbie I mean she is the emblem of Glamour in the 1950s and um she couldn't even fit into a lot of the clothes in the 1960s I mean you know we this was a time when rail thin models like Twiggy were becoming popular and Barbie you know Barbie couldn't wear those clothes she had a sister she had a you know they gave her they gave her a cousin Francy who could wear the mod carnaby street but Barbie was kind of you know a Frump from another time he look pretti then Barbie went through her first drastic makeover when Mattel introduced the new Twist and Turn Barbie in 1967 the doll had to evolve some way and also Mattel had to sell more dolls so in the middle 1960s it came out with an alternative version of the doll called Twist and Turn but what kind of a girl is the new Twist and Turn Barbie whatever kind of girl you wanted to be from there Mattel introduced a Barbie with bendable arms and legs by 1976 she had her last drastic makeover giving her a wide open smile and painted eyes that looked straight ahead I think Malibu Barbie which was the first doll that defiantly looked Straight Ahead the eyes that were downcast and to the side on the original Barbie sort of reflect her Origins but the change in Barbie's glance I think was very much a reflection of the sexual Revolution because by 1970 you could have that body and still look defiantly straight ahead but as Barbie Grew Older so did her fans and by the 1980s a new generation of Barbie collectors emerged um when I was a little kid my mom and dad um used to buy my sister and I tons of Barbies for Christmas and we just started playing with them and I just enjoyed Barbie so much because I could do and be whoever I wanted with Barbie and um so it just kind of started to Parlay as I got older into more like collecting them and saving them in the box along with Barbie collecting came the first Barbie convention fiser is just one of the more than 100,000 Barbie doll collectors half of whom spend $1,000 a year according to Mattel I have $550 dolls so if you averaged over the amount of dolls I have per doll maybe $40 or something F550 um you're looking at you know pretty sizable amount of money um and so if I sold it it' probably be worth a little bit more fer says her collection is worth an estimated $225,000 collectors spend anywhere from honestly $100 a year to several thousand a year in terms of new dolls in terms of if they collect vintage vintage being from 59 to 72 and again could be anywhere from1 to $10,000 a year it just depends how aggressively they're building their collection and in 1988 Mattel began capitalizing on this new breed of Barbie collectors by introducing the happy holidays Barby and other collectible lines which showcased elaborate Fashions fashion does play a lot um especially in some of my collecting books that I have they have a breakdown of all the clothes that you can actually purchase as well and they are worth lot some money if it weren't for fashion there wouldn't be a Barbie doll the clothing really is the locomotive uh that pulls the train and has been from the very beginning and it's mostly what collectors respond to after a while all the dolls naked look alike it's really how they're dressed that differentiates them well I'm going to show you my storage deed have like lots of Herbies in here it's a mess so beware but I have them stacked all over the place so all these bins have Barbie dolls in them and then it goes all the way back to the the end of the wall here and then this is like an older doll too I got it from that one girl who was selling her Barbies this is the troll Barbie this is back from 1992 so yeah I have years ranging and years from the' 60s to you know the present day more focusing probably from the 70s on but this one I got in Texas so I get them all over the place it de debuted in 1968 as the number 1840 in the 1800 Series so and it is a Gold Label though I don't have a lot of the Gold Label ones Gold Label platinum label Black Label and pink label are just some of the new categories Mattel has created for its collector edition dolls Black Label doll is more one that um represents it's like a sensational doll for the doll collector um they're a little bit different they have a few that come out here and there but you don't really see them very often for the Black Label whereas the other labels like you know pink that is more like an invitation to collect the dolls and you'll see that that's like one level up from the main dolls and then you have the Gold Label dolls which have about 20,000 dolls worldwide and then you have the silver label which is 50,000 produced worldwide and then the Platinum which is only a thousand and so those are the ones you really want to collect they're definitely worse something someday fiser says her collection showcases how Barbie has changed over the decades well I really love it because I think it represents you know everything that you know we've evolved as as humans I mean it's like a time capsule right where you stick in the newspaper or something and then you can see you know 40 years down the road what's actually transpired definitely shows how much we've evolved over the years it represents you know American culture I mean there's over 50 years of Barbie and you can see them as they try transgress over the entire you know 50 years Crystal and mateline Smith are some of Barbie's newest collectors together they have about 70 Dolls and their collection keeps growing I really like fish and I actually started collecting bar dolls cuz I like the miniature stuff I I like the stuff in the playsets and stuff I think it's really cool Chris Letta wants to be a fashion designer and and mattaline she wants to be an artist singer/ Graphics designer they got me collecting I don't want to take all their Glory but I have a $1 Crystal even designs her own clothes for Barbie I made this dress I dyed the fabric so look blotchy or whatever and I and I I cut it out and I made this pirate hat too see the sisters are doing more than just collecting dolls Crystal Smith started her own Barbie website when she was 9 years old the site receives more than 700 hits a week and features Barbie downloads customized graphics and even videos happy 50th birthday Barbie what I'm talking about the girl ising out she's at the top of her game she cares the flame she knows her name and what she's all about Barbie barie yoube but despite the dedication of fans Barbie has sparked controversy since she was first introduced in 1959 there have been a number of controversies with Barbie you had a Barbie in the mid90s saying math class is tough you had a a teacher Barbie that didn't have Underpants Growing Up Skipper is one of the most grotesque things I've ever seen when you shoved her arm back this doll made a really bizarre noise and she sprouted up about a quarter of an inch and develop breasts like that and then the really creepy part was you push the arm forward and the breast went away again it was very very very creepy and in 2003 the Associated Press reported that Barbie was even deemed a threat to morality by Saudi Arabia's religious police in response the fua doll was introduced Iran and Saudi Arabia have their own version of Barbie which you know is is their ideal of Womanhood it's I guess it's fine for their societies because that's how it works Barbie critics generally have one complaint her unrealistic proportions according to a group of researchers at a university in Finland if Barbie were real she would lack the 17 to 22% body fat needed for a woman to menstrate other studies show that given her proportions if Barbie were life-sized she would would stand 5' 6 weigh 100 lb and have a 39in bust you learn a lot about dolls when they go to sleep at night Barbie's slumber party set came with a bunch of plastic curlers a bathroom scale permanently set at 110 and and this really is reprehensible it's just a really ill-conceived joke and a small book that said on one side how to lose weight and on the other don't eat Ken in contrast had his set of pajamas came with a glass of milk and a sweet roll it is I mean that that is a powerful message I I don't think that's something where paranoid people are projecting onto the doll that's that's definitely troubling to combat these arguments Mattel changed the ratios of Barbie's body in 2000 her bust shrunk her waist widened to reveal a new belly button and her feet grew but Barbie's supporters argue that her design is not intended to fully replicate a female body Barbie is supposed to be for fun you know and it's supposed to represent a woman to a young child it's not like when you say sexy that she has you know everything say atomically correct you know I mean it's to the point where it's something that a child can relate to but yet not you know to the point where it's overboard in my opinion in terms of Barbie's physique There's an actual reason for it I mean if her if her Dimensions were real she'd be like 35 1833 you need to have a doll be that size so when you put clothing on her it looks normal because she's one six scale but fabric isn't so you have to make her smaller in the waist so she doesn't look like she's pregnant well you know I've never really bought the argument that Barbie is to blame for eating disorders femininity is the problem and Barbie is the scapegoat I think a lot of mothers blame this 11 and 1/2 inch object for messages that they themselves give to their children about how you should look that blame sometimes ends in some violent results you see dolls just with cigarette Burns it's very hard to find things that have been taken out of the box that are in great shape because it's just enormous abuse uh I think kids take out their frustrations on their toys and if you've got a Barbie you know it's it's cutting the hair or decapitating it or taking a hacksaw of the arm or whatever it it's it's it's a lot of societal anger kid style I mean children rarely play with dolls the way the manufacturer intends them to um and a lot of girls young you know young girls older girls teenage girls who are angry about society's oppressive Notions about femininity take it out on Barbie because she's such an emblem of those things then they you know they they destroy the doll cut its hair make it and mutilate it basically it's an expression of anger against what the doll represents but from disproportional size numerous controversies and mutilation her popularity continues to move Beyond doll sales and at 50 Barbie has starred in more than 10 movies since her creation Mattel has sold more than 1 billion dolls it is estimated that 99% of American girls own a Barbie making Barbie the most sold fashioned doll of all timebie I think wherever we're going Barbie will be right there either 6 months behind or 6 months ahead uh it's the secret of her success she just is a perfect mirror of us be exactly like you till then I know just what I'll do barie beautiful bar I'll make believe that I am that's it for this edition of impact But be sure to check out our website at USC impact.org now let's take a look at some of our upcoming stories you're driving down Wilshire Boulevard and there's 40,000 year old dead animals on the sidewalk pretty much it's it's unlike any place in the world when you're carrying a big heavy bucket filled with saber-tooth cat bones and that's definitely rewarding I had this idea to start a program that would help disadvantage residents in Los Angeles they're free art classes that are brought to Skid Row so that lowincome residents and generate more income by learning how to make quality pieces of artwork that can sell my boy friend says you just think you're just some badass those are all fine during the day and then he just put on your skats and you just like turned into a badass he's definitely noticed a change since starting roller derby

Channel: USC Annenberg

Views: 23,996

Keywords: USC, USC Annenberg, Communication, Journalism, impact, Barbie, anniversary, Cristina Bishai, education

Id: MOFgU_4WlIA

Length: 22min 19sec (1339 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2010