Fifty and still a doll

Little girls love their dolls. Big, small, plastic, cloth, wood, walking, talking, crying. Yet, no other doll has become a world-wide cultural icon like Barbie – that blonde bombshell with piercing blue eyes, a waistline to die for and legs up to her armpits.

The fact that over a billion Barbies have been sold in over 150 countries is a salute to that fantastic plastic figure, who despite being surrounded by numerous controversies over the years, has celebrated her 50th birthday this year unscathed.

When Ruth Handler wanted her young daughter Barbara Millicent to have an adult figure doll to play dress-up with, little did she know that the 1/6 scale model that she persuaded her engineer husband to create, would become a billion dollar industry that has also brought immense joy to millions of little girls around the world.
The controversies surrounding her daughter's namesake, however, would have Ruth turning in her grave.

Critics have bashed Mattel Inc the manufacturers of Barbie, for giving young women an unrealistic idea of body image, leading to anorexia.

They also coined a new disease “Barbie Syndrome'' for someone striving for an unattainable body type.

Well, she's a doll and it has been said that if she were a young adult her current 11.5 inches height would convert to 5 feet 9 inches and her vital statistics would convert to 36-18-33 inches.

So, she was given a wider waist in 2000.

There were also criticisms about her features, her colour, that she was only truly representative of the white Anglo-Saxon protestant persona and not other races and cultures. Barbie then became a coloured girl from black to beige and all the shades in between; African, Indian and Hispanic, along with long black and red hair.

As a journalist in Kuwait, I remember that little girls and their mothers created a huge uproar when the still informal ‘Committee for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice' tried to ban the doll on the grounds that she was a bad influence on young boys.A cute young girl pictured on the front pages of various newspapers asked: “Why did they take away my Barbie?'' and the ban plan was scrapped.

The main outcome of all these controversies of course is that Mattel Inc sold a few million dolls more.

Now that she is 50 years old, designers from New Delhi, New York, Shanghai and Malibu have all played dress-up and come up with a fresh new look for Barbie.

Closer home, with Dubai Fashion Week happening late October, local designers have been asked to come up with a Middle Eastern-influenced wardrobe for Barbie.

In March 1959 she debuted in a black and white bathing suit. In 2009 she could be wearing a jalabiya and abaya. That girl has become truly international.