The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us by Tanya Lee StoneMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was pretty interesting in that it explored both the history of Mattel and Barbie and modern-day opinions about her in a variety of communities.
The author left a ton of stuff undiscussed. What about Mattel's position against Barbie talking and potentially offending someone? Of course, after this book was written they abandoned that policy and now she has a cartoon. The author also failed to cover the Christmas Barbie phenomenon where tons of girls got these expensive Christmas Barbies they were told to leave in the box as collector's items. I hated that so much.
Personally, I played with Barbie as a kid and my objection was the same objection I had with all my dolls, that more of them were blonde and blue-eyed than brunette, which seemed the inverse of the world I experienced around me. I was delighted when I got a brunette and one each of redhead Barbie, black Barbie, and Hawaiian Barbie. It also helped me pretend that all the Barbies were actually different people instead of a clone universe. I had one Hispanic Barbie and one Japanese Barbie, but yeah, these were too expensive and fancy to actually play with which was a major bummer.
I kept many of my childhood Barbies and I've been handing them off one by one to my daughter. She loved them even before I gave her mine, having seen them at her friends' homes. Unbeknownst to her, I've now been building a bit of a Barbie community. I got her some young shapeless Chelsea and Skipper dolls, and some heavier and extra shapely Barbies. My Kens all disappeared from childhood so she got a new one with his own change of outfits. Unfortunately, there's still a bit of a blonde surplus in this community. We're working on it!
As a mom, another frustration is that it's now difficult to buy any affordable quality Barbie clothing. A lot of my daughter's Barbies are still rocking durable 80s outfits.
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