Book review: ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie’

Stone, Tanya Lee, “The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll’s History and Her Impact on Us.”  Viking. 2010. 128 pages. 0147516064 Library Copy 978-0147516060.
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With the Barbie movie release on July 21, there has been a lot of discussion on Barbie. Some love her, some hate her. And a few, like myself, just never got into her. 

Like her or not, the doll, which debuted in 1959, is part and parcel of American culture.

Tanya Lee Stone tells the history of Barbie in “The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll’s History and Her Impact on Us.” In many ways the book about Barbie is a reflection of Barbie. 

If there was ever a book you could judge by its cover, it is this one: With a powder blue background, it has an original Barbie doll headshot with the title above her in red. 

Inside, there are pictures of Barbie in her many outfits, her creators, and young girls playing with her. Also, there are images that reflect the eras that shaped Barbie. 

The number of pages does not seem like a lot, but “The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie” covers many topics. Barbie is a doll, but like the book, she is more than meets the eye.

Stone begins by telling the reader about Barbie’s maker, Ruth Handler, who was one of the three people who started the Mattel toy company, which made and introduced Barbie to the world. Born in 1916 to Polish Jewish immigrants, she was raised by her sister and brother-in-law who owned a pharmacy. 

Ruth grew up having a job and learning how to run the pharmacy. She was a risk taker by nature. Not long after she married, Handler encouraged her husband Elliot, an art student, to quit his job at a lighting fixture company and focus on making his ideas come off paper and into people’s hands. 

Later, after their children Barbara Joyce and Kenneth Robert were born, they would meet Harold Matson, who wanted to produce Elliot’s ideas. Stone writes that Ruth had an idea where Elliot “would design beautiful things, Matson would produce the products, and Ruth would sell them.” 

Among many business achievements, it needs to be noted that Mattel was inclusionary. “There were people of different ethnicities working together,” which was not seen very often in the 1950s. Most of their workers in the early days were women. There were shared bathrooms that Black and white people used. Stone quoted Hander as saying that she “didn’t intentionally set out to integrate our plant,” their philosophy was to “hire the best person for each job.”

At the time, Stone writes that most of the dolls were for letting little girls play “Mommy and other games that involved nurturing and caring for their babies at home.” Girls didn’t have the dolls to imagine themselves playing “older girls or single women.”

Handler’s idea for Barbie came from watching her daughter Barbara play with dolls. Barbara wasn’t interested in playing with baby dolls or the “glamor dolls” sold by make-up companies for women to learn to use their products. Barbara and her friends played with adult paper dolls, attaching clothes to them with paper tabs. Stone quotes Handler as, saying that her daughter was “carrying on conversations, making the dolls real people. I used to watch that over and over and think: if only we could take this play pattern and three-dimensionalize it, we would have something very special.” 

Barbie’s inspiration came from what was happening in the world at the time. 

It was the 1950s and Stone shares images of pinup models and starlets. As Handler was thinking of the shape, Stone writes, “it would have to have the figure that Ruth believed a girl might want to pretend having as a teenager. Ruth thought of her doll as a teenaged fashion model, a teeny tiny mannequin.” 

In 1956, Handler would see the doll that would ultimately inspire the Barbie doll. It was the Bild-Lilli doll, “a sexy novelty gift for men,” which wasn’t even created for children.   

Stone writes about the shape of Barbie and body images the doll put forward about women. She notes the way supermodels try to achieve a certain image, using photoshop to help. But like Barbie, none of these images are real. Barbie is a doll, originally designed with different careers and hobbies that didn’t tie her down, and she has no personality. 

Stone writes, “She isn’t stuck-up. She doesn’t brag about her-one-hundred-twenty-plus-careers.”  

Handler was surprised that Barbie had controversy. She referred to earlier versions of Barbie as “quite bland.” Stone writes that in later years, sales increased with consumer satisfaction as they made her “a little prettier.” 

Stone covers Barbie’s evolution. She writes of how Barbie had had friends of other ethnicities since the 1960s, but in 1980, Mattel introduced Black and Hispanic dolls who were Barbie. Barbie was no longer white, Barbie was representing more American girls. 

Barbie’s personal adventures with the children who played with her are covered – and uncovered – by Stone. If she wasn’t being dressed and going on dates and getting undressed with Ken by the girls themselves, she was getting attention from their brothers, “She has been burned at the stake, put under the wheels of a car, torn apart, delimbed, and flushed down the toilet.” 

Is Barbie good or bad? Stone gives support for Barbie being a tool of self-expression for the people who interact with her. Kids explore what they like and dislike, and Barbie, who changes with the times, is great for that.