No, not that Barbie Girl!
I mean the real deal, the long-legged, perfectly-made-up, ever-smiling 50 year-old bombshell who was one of my best friends when I was a little girl.
As a very little girl, I played with my Aunt K’s Barbie, who looked like this one.
I always thought she seemed vaguely dangerous, sort of fast. The kind of girl who smoked cigarettes and snuck out after curfew to ride in cars with boys. I was a bit afraid of her, to be honest; I knew in real life she’d never be friends with me.
Notice how non-threatening my favourite Barbie is?
She had come a long way from her sex-doll roots by the 1970s.
In cleaning out my mother’s basement this summer, while I managed to retain some real estate for storing (yes, it’s true) every letter I ever received, including notes passed during school, and those stuffed toys with which I just cannot part and yet have no room to store, I did consent to take home some of the crap very meaningful souvenirs of my childhood. Among them, my Barbies and, (this is a blog about fashion, after all) their clothes.
Now, these girls (and one guy) have seen better days. I took excellent care of them, but when I got too old for them, visiting children were allowed to play with them and they were not as anal careful as I was, so it was quite sad to see how roughed up my beloved playmates had gotten while I neglected them, busy as I was with snogging my boyfriend, crimping my hair, dancing to British imports, going to the beach, and generally getting on with the time-honoured business of (mostly) growing up.
Having brought them home, I decided to give Barbie and company a bath, to fix up their hair and wash and iron their clothes on the off chance that my little niece might one day want to play with them in a moment of crushing boredom while she’s visiting. If not, maybe I’ve gone a little way toward redeeming myself for having neglected them so badly.
Here’s the thing: I know Barbie is controversial and I sort of understand why, but I would never be one of those people who forbid their children from playing with Barbies.
I know her physique is ridiculous and that her proportions are preposterous.
In my day, she wasn’t even remotely ethnically diverse.
But I also know that my Barbies had great lives: there was nothing these women couldn’t and didn’t do! They jumped out of planes and put out fires and went into space (it never occurred to me that, in the 1970s, these were not things that women were supposed to do– indeed, they were not things that women did at all, yet.). They had tons of boyfriends (invisible ones, for the most part– there was only the one Ken doll and he looked like this:
Did I mention it was the 70s? He had stick-on facial hair in a variety of styles: ‘stache, side-burns, goatee… to be worn alone or all at once… Yeah, baby!).
They sometimes even had girlfriends, long before I had any idea what it meant to be gay– I just knew I only had the one Ken and he was, as you can see, no great prize…
They were fashion designers and interior decorators and vets and Olympic skiers and swimmers and high-powered business women (in what kind of business, it was never quite clear, but I think it was advertising or something like that) and actors and dancers and teachers and moms and they did it all in killah outfits.
I don’t think Barbie hurt me at all.
She did not limit the way I perceive/d the role of women in society, she just confirmed what I already knew based on the women around me: that women can do and be anything at all and look great doing it, if they so choose
(of course, my Barbies always did!).
Barbie also fed my creativity beyond just the groovy life-scenarios I dreamed up for her; I designed and made a ton of clothes for her. I remember spending entire days outside in the yard, surrounded by Barbies in the houses I’d built for them under the trees and bushes, making furniture and dwellings out of leaves and twigs and empty boxes. Once everyone was housed in a well-appointed home, I’d get down to fashioning clothes for them. Sometimes, they wore skirts made of leaves and Hawaiian leis made of individual lilac blossoms. Other times, I used scraps from the cute clothes my mum made me or I cannibalized old nylon stockings to make Danskin-inspired disco-dancing outfits of matching bodysuits and skirts. No material was off-limits and no lack of material would stop me: no zipper small enough? No problem, learn to alter one. No buttons small enough? No problem: figure out how to use a drawstring or some other form of closure.
In other words, it was all about the clothes– Barbie could wear things I never could.
Grown-up clothes.
LOTS of clothes.
Clothes I made, clothes my godmother made, clothes from the store.
Pink clothes, frilly clothes, fancy clothes.
Clothes, clothes, clothes.
Here are a few looks back at that enduring fashion icon, Barbie, and what she wore in the 1970s in suburban Canada.
Seventies Sartorial Splendour modelled by:
Malibu PJ, 1972
Free Moving Barbie, 1975
Fashion Photo Barbie, 1977
Short-haired Barbie whose name I forget and whom I cannot find on any website… Does anyone remember her? The yellow satin jumpsuit with shrug and overskirt are her original clothes, if that helps.
MIA
(probably gone to that great landfill in the sky):
Ballerina Barbie, 1975
Malibu Barbie, 1971 (Okay, I do still have her, but she is in no shape to be photographed…)
Sweet 16 Barbie, 1974
Superstar Barbie, 1977
Oh how this take me back to your childhood!!!
You have done an amazing rescue job. I saw them when they were resurrected fom my basement!
They do look better, but they still look rough and there were a few things I couldn’t salvage.
I have a whack of mending ahead of me– nearly every single item of clothing is torn or missing a fastener or two. I think maybe Lara played with them– her fine motor skills might not have been up to managing all those tiny snaps, armholes, etc.
A good project for a snowy winter weekend evening. 🙂 (Gawd, my life is glamourous!)
More glamourous than mine,given my rubber boots and earmuffs!
Wow! As a child who was never allowed to own a Barbie, I would have been extremely envious of your collection!!!
You are welcome to come over and play with my Barbies any time.
I so thoroughly enjoyed this post! Thanks for bringing me back to my childhood. I remember all the Barbie accessories that I collected over the years, and I wish I still had the pink Corvette, the Superstar stage show, and the Dream House. To me, Barbie did not mean oppression, it meant a world of possibilities. Come to think of it, the shoes that I collected, and put into neat little rows, really reminds me of LHR’s shoe cupboard at the office. 🙂
So now I’ve finally had the time to digest this long post. I think at the time there were a succession of posts and didn’t have the time to read (just look at the pics!)
First off, I had Ballerina Barbie too. I remember getting her for Christmas from Santa one year. She was probably my nicest Barbie as all the other Barbies were my sisters.
Also, I must comment on the yellow polyester pant suit above and how my aunt’s lovely pant suit was a fairly good match
http://www.flickr.com/photos/praguelondon/4024653276/
I know! I said to your Aunt at the time, “Hey! My Barbies HAVE that outfit!”
Do you think that playing with Barbies, who shared all their clothes, led us to be clothes-sharers later in life?
That is a good point. Perhaps that is true.
I found out who the nameless Barbie is! She is “Golden Dream” Barbie. M got me a great Barbie 50th Anniversary book and it has her in it– yay! 🙂
hi yyz!!
your short haired barbie is known as “pretty changes” barbie and she originally came with 2 wigs, a long blonde one and a long light brown one.
here is a link of one in the original box so that you can see how she looked when she was new.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1978-Pretty-Changes-Barbie-2598-Mint-in-Box-NRFB-/371040018824?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5663b56188
WOW!!! i didn’t realize that these posts are over 4 years old. but i did enjoy reading your story and looking at the pictures of your childhood barbies.
it looks like you did some “head-swapping” to your dolls, the same way i used to with some of my dolls too!!!
hm hm hm…..
isn’t it GREAT to have your childhood barbie “friends” once again!!!
i have most of my childhood barbies too!!!
:o)