Extract from the book “Barbie, the plastic Venus by Valeria Arnaldi. Published with the kind permission of “Sentieri Selvaggi Magazine”, which we thank for their availability.
Created in 1959 by Ruth Handler, the most famous doll in the world has turned 61.
Her unreal and perfect image has embodied the dreams and aspirations of entire generations and has been able to completely revolutionize the performative and social criteria of femininity. We celebrate it through some pages of the beautiful book written by Valeria Arnaldi, Barbie, the plastic Venus (LitEdizioni), which dismantles the narration of a model of femininity enslaved by a male imaginary, to overturn it in a reading that puts the woman back at the center of all new narratives
Model and muse
Tall, beautiful, blonde, curvilinear, capable of any enterprise. Iconic. Eternally young.
Imperfect for reality, ideal for dreams. Model - also muse - of several stylists and above all a model of numerous generations. Of girls and even women who dream of becoming like her and of men who fantasize about meeting her. Barbie is sixty years old. In fact, many have passed since her invention, but her concept knows no wrinkles. Nor competition.
Despite the changes in style, needs, tastes and despite the many dolls that have tried to imitate and surpass her — and at times have perhaps managed to undermine her place in the hearts of little customers — Barbie has always remained on the podium, to the point of becoming a myth, concept even before being an object, philosophy and not just a product.
Born from the lucky intuition of Ruth Handler, wife of the co-founder of the Mattel brand, to give her daughter a game that would allow her to imagine herself as an adult, the doll most famous in the world has quickly gone beyond the world of toys to become a costume phenomenon. And as such she was celebrated, studied but also "judged".
Andy Warhol, in 1986, brought her into the art world, immediately consecrating her to a pop icon and, at the same time, of femininity on a par with Marilyn Monroe. Other artists have followed his example, finding in his forms the symbol with which to synthesize an entire universe made up of stereotypes and clichés, of luxuries, frivolities and aspirations, condemning the fictitious and limited horizon, even more considered limiting, of his world of plastic, but also animated by desires, dreams, fantasies, wonder.
Excess. At the same time, however, for those same characteristics that made her — and make — iconic, Barbie has over time been the subject of more accusations and protests than many, especially many, who have seen in her image that of a woman enslaved by a male imaginary, forced to be perfect to satisfy the demands of society.
A mother's wish
Venus in miniature, Barbie was born on March 9, 1959 from a mother's desire to offer her daughter a different toy to allow her to imagine her future. Reflection is simple and comes from mere observation.
There are toys for childhood, not for older girls who are starting to look at the world and tomorrow, imagining themselves as women. Leaving the dolls behind her, her daughter spends time with images of divas cut out of magazines.
She no longer enjoys herself, or at least not just playing mother to this or that doll, she likes to imagine herself big, beautiful, successful. Happy. Here's what Ruth sees in her daughter's game. And here's what she offers to the girls of her generation and actually to many more than hers: the possibility of inventing a different tomorrow from what society suggests, in fact imposes on them.
They won't necessarily have to become wives and mothers, they will be able to create a career and, judging by the infinite professions that Barbie will undertake, they will be able to follow dreams, ambitions and fantasies, certain that, as that pink plastic happiness suggests, they will always be crowned with success. It is normal for little girls to let themselves be conquered by it. It is normal for teenagers and young people to try to look like her.
The model Ruth looks to to give her daughter an alternative horizon is the only one she knows and is anything but childish.
It is in fact Bild Lilli, a doll launched on the German market a few years earlier, in 1955, but destined for a much shorter success than that of its "imitation" - it was only marketed until 1964 - and not designed for an audience of little girls but for adults. Lilli is not the classic toy doll but the more sophisticated (and grown up) version of a woman-object. She is not meant to be a model, nor to be the protagonist of fairy-tale scenarios, but to be the queen of concrete, indeed carnal, fantasies.
It does not propose a portrait of the woman to identify with, but a parody of the female image seen by men. It is precisely the male gazes that “design” her body. Lilli is a buxom girl, pretending to be naïve, who enjoys bewitching wealthy men. She is the femme fatale of the period. She is a patinated blonde. She is a cinema icon. It is used as a gift or gadget for bachelor parties or similar occasions. She teases fantasies, she doesn't embody dreams.
Make me fatal
It was the cartoonist Reinhard Beuthien who drew the sketch and defined its character, temperament and references, for the German tabloid "Bild", who conceived it, in fact, as a femme fatale: narrow waist, curves on display, strapped and indispensable dresses high heels. Lilli is the condescending blonde who makes herself adored and always says yes, happy to be an object of desire.
In reality, it is not intuition that guides Ruth towards that decidedly unusual doll for childhood, but the market. In her uniqueness, different from everything the market offers, Lilli, with her adult curves and her rich wardrobe, quickly becomes the object of desire of the very young.
Ruth buys a pair, then shows them to her husband, explaining her idea: that one doll it may be their brand's flagship product. The husband isn't convinced, it's a risky bet and he doesn't want to take it. In the end, however, he lets himself be persuaded and revises the doll to adapt it to his new audience.
Thanks to the support of engineer, Jack Ryan Mattel rethinks the look of the doll not going to dilute those same characters that had previously been judged "excessive" but even exasperating them. Do little girls dream of being seductive women, divas in the spotlight? And let them do it well. Barbie will have a burlesque physique, artfully designed to seduce. Ryan is the perfect person to do it: he is strongly influenced by female charms, is in his fifth marriage, and has an unbridled passion for parties and entertainment.
Mattel's prototype
By giving body to the miniature Venus, Mattel redesigns the female aesthetic canons, revolutionizing centuries of female beauty canons and devising a new measure of harmony, which seems completely oblivious to history. The ancient criteria are overcome. Balance gives way to extraordinaryness. Paradoxically, Mattel does not reduce the shapes of the Lilli from which he took inspiration. On the contrary. Between bursting breasts, narrow hips and small feet always on tiptoe, Barbie gives Barbie the characteristic precarious, imaginative balance that makes her unmistakable.
In exaggeration it is the first taste of the game and also its salvation. The excess was perhaps supposed to be the signal to make the girls understand that it was just a toy and not a concrete goal. A clue evidently too swaggered. Barbie becomes an icon and is consecrated to that very model that she wanted to avoid her becoming.
The virtue that rests in the "average" is a renegade concept.
It's time to ask, perhaps demand, exuberance. Barbie was born into an economy that thrives. The war now appears to be a distant memory and what is left, its industry, has learned the lesson - and culture - of consumption. The middle class in the US is fine. And it is the middle class that the doll is aimed at with the richness of her wardrobe and her accessories.
Barbie is not a princess, but she is the girl next door, the one that many of the girls who receive her as a gift will be and that the others can dream of becoming. The market constantly solicited by new proposals is responding well. And in this context, fashion doli is an answer that generates another question: the perfect product.
He can therefore banish from his world everything that came before, son of knowledge and intellectualism which, being an elitist heritage, are only a niche for the market.
A new paradigm of beauty
Enough therefore with the classic vision of beauty which is, after all, a gift of nature, therefore obtained by birth and not "purchasable". Make way for the concrete imagination of commerce and above all of the marketable.
The lesson of the Doryphoros, which has gone down in history as an expression of the Canon of Polycletus, according to which a body is beautiful when each of its parts has a size proportionate to the whole figure, is forgotten. The aesthetic canon which, adapted and deepened, has spanned the centuries, fueling the debate on Beauty, with the capital letter of perfection coveted by men and women since ancient times, is now "old".
So everything from that premise is achieved. Thus Vitruvius who measures every part of the body in an attempt to make architecture of the figure, therefore to build the appearance according to taste and "project". And also the centuries of history made in everyday life, not only in art, of a rewriting that with natural artifices first, up to cosmetic surgery, has made tension to the perfect physique and obsession with him. Something new is needed. A different dream that fuels alternative fantasies in order to be the only answer.
Of the ancient conception, in the design of Barbie, clues can be glimpsed but only to make it the basis of a new iconographic reflection. Classical harmony satisfies the cultured gaze, subliminally seduces, even recalls the sacredness of Life.
This is not what little ones need. To conquer the market, something new is needed that distances itself markedly from what has been known up to that moment, not so much in terms of toys - there is no great competition, as anticipated - but in terms of knowledge, images, philosophy. Ruth has to overcome traditional dolls but also glossy magazines, making them less attractive as figurines. Her image of her of the woman must give more.
From the model of classic beauty, son of proportions, to its exasperations is a short step. In his world, beauty goes beyond harmony to pursue the extraordinary. Barbie is not exactly harmonica. Her breasts could not be supported by her bust. Her feet would never be able to ensure the balance of the body. Her head, though "empty", feels heavy on her legs. Impossible his waist so tight.
According to the 1:6 scale ratio applied to her world, Barbie in reality would be 175 cm tall, would have 91 cm of breast, 46 of waist, 84 of hips. In 1965, her scale showed pounds, therefore just under 50 kilos, clearly underweight.
And if it is true that this raised doubts and protests from the parents almost immediately, it is equally true that it was precisely his impossible model, in the end, that imposed itself, in fact, even on that adult world that contested it.
Having overcome the harmony of the classic Venus, Barbie is crowned as a modern Venus.
The virtual defeats the real. Beauty in the flesh is won by that of ink and color. Desired because unattainable and for this very reason often obsessively pursued. In the centuries before, then, faster, over the decades, taste has changed measures and ratios, often with the desire for "extra" volumes, from the lips to the breast, to the point of transforming the proposal of an attainable type into the imposition of a model unfeasible.
But, mind you, prosecutable, as aesthetic interventions suggest, even these increasingly extreme.
The passing of the years and the changing of tastes and values have led to significant transformations in the image of Barbie, called to adapt to the demands of society and bear witness to her times. Everytime. And those changes are the yardstick of the changes of society itself, of its fantasies and confessable desires of her. But, after all, even the unspeakable ones. Because if the doli was made to measure, her message remained linked to the purity of that first ideal.
Those who dream of Barbie's appearance do not look at her realism but at her extraordinary nature, despite the corrections applied to the model over time, which are nothing more than masks used to silence society's respectability and its false morals. It is not Barbie that determines the aesthetic horizon of girls, but it is the real world that makes Barbie's horizon possible and desirable - especially in the mirror.
Beyond the toy
When Ruth Handler "thinks" of Barbie there is not even an inkling of the controversy that will arise. The idea is just that of creating a toy, as such, with limited, almost non-existent effects on customs and values other than the hoped-for market ones.
The politically correct is philosophy and "fashion" still far away. Barbie becomes a symbol of luxury and well-being, she is the emblem of a rich society that asks women only to be beautiful to make them happy.
Ruth just wants to create a toy and she wants to do it for her daughter, we said it, but the key to the design of the doll is right here. Ruth does not want just any doll but a friend for her little girl and, wishing her a bright future as every mother does with her children, she can only give her as a model an ideal of perfection which is that, in rubber and plastic, of the time. Therefore, Barbie must be beautiful, good, smiling and she must have everything she wants.
There is therefore no diktat of the model but the intensity of a mother's wish. Ruth wants to give her daughter a doll with which to project herself into the future, Barbie must ensure the game of a perfect tomorrow: in grace and beauty, as fairy tales want, but with the addition of a patina of success, as the chronicles suggest. Unattainable perhaps, but imitable to multiply the possibilities of having fun. So far the desire of a mother, which, in the power of the entrepreneur, ends up becoming an unaware - and misunderstood - political message.
The potential of Barbie
The invention of Barbie, then harshly condemned by feminists, may actually have been from its origins, perhaps despite itself, an instrument of revenge, self-awareness and one's potential. Little girls are no longer forced to see themselves fulfilled just because they are loved by a man and generate children. And, not even to imagine themselves adults only as grown up children. Now they can dream, follow their imagination, believe in their aspirations, in the plural of unlimited potential.
And they can imagine themselves to the fullest. Beauty and goodness are the only known ways, which perhaps become chains, but in fact open up an unlimited horizon, a future to be written. Barbie was born miss but quickly manages to become much more. As early as 1962 she wears a outfit inspired by Jackie Kennedy and what may appear to be only a choice dictated by fashion in following a recognized icon of elegance, it still offers little girls new food for thought.
And in 1965 that reflection was further projected forward and "guided" thanks to the proposal of clothes conceived as work suits. In less than ten years, Barbie goes from beauty queen to career woman. In 1975 she is an Olympic gold athlete, which she conquers in more than one discipline.
In 1985, she returned to being a business woman, complete with a briefcase: the "Day-to-Night" look lends itself well to summarizing the soul of Barbie, serious and diligent in her profession but capable of letting go and having fun in the evening . Her double life is not a complaint of a mask, but proof of her perfection: Barbie excels in everything she does. She devotes herself to work, reaching the top of each career, but she never neglects her private life, between friends and her boyfriend.
And the evolution continues from year to year. In 1989 she is a Unicef ambassador. In 1992 she ran for the presidency of the United States of America for the first time. She will also do it again in the new millennium multiple times. All this can do that little one doll who only owned a bathing suit. It is the prototype of American philosophy: everyone can become what he wants, sacrifice and determination are enough.
Misleading fairy tale?
Is the happy ending that Barbie promises an illusion that hurts growth? Perhaps, but proposing the model of a successful career and a wealthy job is no more serious and illusory than a happy ending in which the charming prince solves every problem and "gives" - therefore a concession, not conquers - happiness. Whatever personal priorities, either ending probably, perhaps inevitably, won't be for everyone. So which prison has the narrowest bars? Which fairy tale is more deceptive? At every age the moral judgment of him.
In Barbie's era, late XNUMXs/early XNUMXs, work and business weren't utopias as it may seem today, in a civilization - anything but civilized - of eternal precarious workers, but they were achievable goals, so why not propose them as possible goals? Barbie thus becomes an instrument and banner of freedom, at least, of the alternative, where tomorrow is no longer a marked road but a way to be traced.
While Snow White, Cinderella and the other heroines of the classical tradition, in fact, shift attention to the Other, acknowledging man's power to save them even from themselves, thus admitting a sort of original weakness, Barbie invites us to say "I ”, relegating his partner Ken to the role of follower. She is the heroine of the game.
Her boyfriend serves her as an accessory, just like clothes and shoes, and her identity is even confirmed by the wardrobe built just to support her on this or that occasion. She frames her story but does not determine it. She's the star, he grows in her shadow. And this too is an innovative message. The man is not the protagonist of the story, nor of the couple.
The woman does not have to stand behind him. Ken exists as long as she is by her side, then fades away. He has no other identity, nor function in his toy-world. It is he who is defined by the woman, not the other way around. The revolution is underway without whoever started it fully realizing it, as are those who play.
Target of feminists
Meanwhile, feminists are hot on the heels. Barbie becomes the enemy to fight, a symbol of centuries of submission, a synthesis of modern prejudices. What makes the message misleading is the "packaging". The revolutionary soul is kept in the body of a pin-up. Barbie is beautiful, outrageously beautiful. She is overly curvaceous, ostentatiously sensual, evidently pleased with herself and serenely vain.
At the very moment in which she affirms that she does not need a man by her side to be, she also reaffirms her right to pleasure, in its various forms. Barbie desires and takes. She will have villas, sports cars, star wardrobes, an entire world built according to her will. And she will always be perfect. Because she wasn't born to be an ordinary doll, she was conceived as a mini-diva, small in size, monumental in impact, capable of breaking down stereotypes and revolutionizing the imagination.
His first outfit it's a simple black and white striped one-piece swimsuit, worn with sandals and a pair of dark glasses on the head. His eyes are underlined with a heavy stroke of eyeliner black, the lips are tinted with scarlet lipstick. The cool it's simple but aggressive. The bodyimmediately highlights the shapes of the figurine, reaffirming the distance from the others doll. Barbie is not a child but a woman, and here too she is not an ordinary woman, nor just a star, she is a sex bomb, made to arouse desire. And push it more and more.
It is for pleasure and for one's satisfaction that over the years it undergoes some "retouching". Even before society collects the same stimuli to make it a rule, Barbie tells of women's struggle for beauty which is no longer a tool to guarantee the future but a means to ensure pleasure. “All my philosophy on Barbie – Ruth Handler explained in 1994 in her autobiography Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story — was that through the doll, the child could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie has always represented that a woman has choices."
A doll and a flag. Being what you want, for Handler, also means going beyond the known, even when it comes to human structures and appearance. Barbie is impossible because she doesn't have to imprison the girls, forcing them into the reality and concreteness of tomorrow. The comparison and consequent potential conflict between the image that the girls see in the mirror and that of their doll is not a topic that interests Ruth because it is only a present contingency and has nothing to do with the tomorrow she and the little players are looking at. The present is limit, the future is potential.
In fact, the condemnation of Barbie is not in the eyes of the girls who, generation after generation, have chosen her as their favorite companion, but in those of the parents who, immersed in the concreteness of everyday life and its problems, no longer have the lightness to go beyond the form and enjoy simple entertainment.
The sexual revolution
Meanwhile, the protest continues. A few years after her birth and in the midst of her affirmation, Barbie literally collides with the sexual revolution. Champion of the freedom to be, to have and above all to want and to take, she is actually banished as a cliché of a world that she wants to believe is lost.
The woman object is a legacy of the past that feminism wants to forget and that the sexy heroine instead seems to continue to promote and remember, a monument to the woman who must always be perfect to be "accepted" by the male. In the decades of her the iconic figure of her resists, so rooted in the collective cultural heritage.
However, the new millennium imposes more than one transformation on her, eschewing excesses to arrive at a more minimal version, which is not a return to naturalness but a landing in a dimension she has never known, decidedly far from the project of its creator for which Barbie does not it had to be a "mirror" but a model.
His image scares adults. The catwalks have brought under the spotlight childish beauties, still shapeless, imposing aesthetic standards that are impossible to embody. The image has become an obsession. Eating disorders are spreading. Consumption becomes fashion. And to counter the phenomenon, fueled far more by fashion than by play, it is against the doll, an easier target than the others, that the finger is pointed.
The request for greater realism deprives Barbie of the privilege of her step eternally on her toes, with an innate 12 heel, a guarantee of sensuality and grace, bringing her to an earthly flat plant. And he makes her come out of her defeated by the challenge thrown at her gravity, condemning her to widen her hips and waist. He also takes away a few inches of her height to make her less "frightening" in the unreality of her however valued and desirable of her.
It makes an image similar to that of many little girls, thus effectively limiting their imagination, forcing them to come to terms with the possible and the real. She is no longer unreachable. However, this more natural model is no less seductive than the original. Barbie remains the "top" that many have tried to obscure.
The change of temperament
Change the physique and change the temperament as well. Not even his frivolity is more acceptable in the universe of politically correct that seems to look suspiciously at every slight smile. Barbie is getting more and more ambitious. She aspires to the top of every career. Moreover, at the top in every area of life. She is an athlete, a career woman, a veterinarian, a rock star, even the president of the United States of America, the first "woman" in history to play the role.
She is good-natured, capable of self-sacrificing generosity, always ready to take care of others: she takes care of little sisters, friends' children, puppies. She is an excellent cook and a perfect hostess, as evidenced by the care and furnishings of all her — many — homes. And she is adorable, in the full sense of the term, so much so that her eternal boyfriend Ken forgives her everything, even the betrayal with the toy-boy Blaine, when in 2006 - the news bounced on the national pages of newspapers all over the world - she leaves to take a break with the blond surfer.
The Barbie universe is confirmed as infinite. She knows no cultural limits either. She is acclaimed all over the world, so much so that she is made in "multicultural" versions. She is idolized by fashion. She is crowned by cinema. And she gets to have life-size houses, where the girls can really enter to feel at home with their friend and companion in so many adventures. And mind you, it's not just about the kids.
The older age of the doli gives it a longer life also in commercial terms. Barbie is liked by girls but in fact equally by the more grown-up ones, even teenagers, who change their game mode, not a toy, and by women who choose her as an icon and "logo" on clothes and accessories. Because Barbie is not a mere pastime but the key to a specific lifestyle, between luxury, success, fashion, sex appeal. And all this - here is the real seduction - in her world guarantees happiness. A full, inexhaustible, independent happiness.
Eve and then Adam
Finally. In her universe, Eden sees Eve born before Adam — Ken is conceived two years after her creation — and therefore it is she who dictates names, looks, philosophy. What is proposed is a female-centric universe, condemned however, ironically, precisely by many women who feel offended by that dominant femininity for a misinterpreted renegade feminism that asks women to become "man" to ensure their right to equality.G
Audrey Hepburn as Barbie
Barbie at the cinema
The book Barbie, the plastic Venus tells of Barbie's arrival at the cinema in the chapter "Che Star!"
Barbie and the Nutcracker (Barbie in the Nutcracker, 2001)
Barbie Rapunzel (Barbie as Rapunzel, 2002)
Barbie and the lake of the (Barbie of Swan Lake, 2003)
Barbie The Princess and the Pauper (Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper, 2004)
Barbie Fairytopia (2004)
Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (Barbie and the Magie of Pegasus, 2005)
Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia (2005)
Barbie Diaries (2006)
Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses (Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses, 2006)
Barbie Fairytopia — Magic of the Rainbow (Barbie Fairytopia: Magie of the Rainbow, 2007)
Barbie princess of the lost island (Barbie as the lsland Princess, 2007)
Barbie Mariposa (Barbie Mariposa and Her Butterfly Friends, 2008)
Barbie and the diamond castle (Barbie and the Diamond Castle, 2008)
Barbie in a Christmas Carol (Barbie in a Christmas Carol, 2008)
Barbie Presents Thumbelina (Barbie Presents Thumbelina, 2009)
Barbie and the Three Musketeers (Barbie and the Three Musketeers, 2009)
Barbie in a Mermaid Tale (2010)
Barbie — The Magic of Fashion (Barbie: A Fashion Fairy Tale, 2010)
Barbie: A Fairy Secret (Barbie: A Fairy Secret, 2011)
Barbie in Princess Charm School (Barbie Princess Charm School, 2011)
Barbie — The perfect Christmas (Barbie: A Perfect Christmas, 2011)
Barbie in the Ocean Adventure 2 (Barbie in A Mermaid Tale 2, 2012)
Barbie — The Princess and the Popstar (Barbie: The Princess & The Popstar, 2012)
Barbie in The Pink Shoes (2013)
Barbie Mariposa and the Fairy Princess (Barbie Mariposa & the FairyPrincess, 2013)
Barbie and the Legendary Horse (Barbie & Her Sisters in A Pony Tale, 2013)
Barbie the pearl princess (Barbie in the Pearl Princess, 2014)
Barbie the secret kingdom (Barbie in the Secret Door, 2014)
Barbie a Superprincess (Barbie in Princess Power, 2015)
Barbie Principes a Rock (Barbie in Rock'n Royals, 2015)
Barbie the treasure of puppies (Barbie and Her Sisters in The Great PuppyAdventure, 2015)
Barbie Special Squad (Barbie: Spy Squad, 2016)
Barbie Star Light Adventure (Barbie Star Light Adventure, 2016)
Barbie and the search for puppies (Barbie and Her Sisters in a PuppyChase, 2016)
Barbie — In the world of video games (Barbie Video Game Hero, 2017)
Barbie Dolphin Magic (Barbie Dolphin Magic, 2017)
