Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [122]
At the 1992 convention, I felt as if I were on a theme-park ride. I ate lunch the first day at a table hosted by an African-American collector, who lured me to her room for a peek at a prized possession—an issue of Hustler from July 1976 that featured a photo spread entitled "Vulva of the Dolls." I do not recall the images clearly, but in my notebook I jotted: "Bugs Bunny violates Francie with plastic carrot." Also at my table were Bob Young and Richard Nathans from Tempe, Arizona. Long before Mattel issued Dance!Workout with Barbie, Young had been animating the doll, frame by frame, manipulating Barbie in an aerobics routine with his grammar-school-age niece.
The convention food seemed straight out of childhood: red Jell-0 with fruit and, at the Saturday night banquet, pineapple-glazed ham. Mattel's presentations also had a grade-school quality, like filmstrips for social studies class. The most surreal was a slide show, narrated by designer Carol Spencer, that traced the evolution of her Classique Collection from its inception (she designed the outfits while watching Murder She Wrote) to its production in Mattel's two plants in China. "The bicycle is the most common transportation means in China," Spencer recited as slides of Chinese peasants and bicycle racks appeared on the screen. "It's my understanding that they're not allowed to own automobiles." Next came shots inside the factory: Asians peering at tiny objects in front of large machines. "This is the heat setting of the rhinestones on the tights of Hollywood Premiere Fashion," Spencer said. "They're placing the rhinestones with tweezers onto a special fixture, and positioning the fabric over the rhinestones, and then the press goes down and heat actually sets the rhinestones onto the garments."
Other processes included face-painting and eyelash-rooting ("an extremely difficult operation . . . the operator was trained for two months"). The crowd applauded wildly when Spencer's Benefit Ball Barbie—the Georgette Mosbacher look-alike—had her eyelashes installed and clipped.
The convention had one redemptive moment. Doll authority Sarah Sink Eames had been rumored to have information about a prototype for "Colored Skipper"—Barbie's African-American sister, who antedated Black Barbie by several years. Eames not only confirmed that such an object existed, but that it was in her collection.
Many collectors told me that the 1993 convention in Baltimore, hosted by doll artist, illustrator, and former window-dresser Mark Ouellette, was a splashier production than the one in Niagara. It had six hundred participants and a waiting list of three thousand. But such extravaganzas are a recent phenomenon. The first Barbie conclave, held in October 1980, attracted under two hundred people. It took place in Queens, New York, at the Travelodge International Hotel, not far from Kennedy Airport.
Sybil de Wein, who, with Joan Ashabraner, published The Collector's Encyclopedia of Barbie Dolls and Collectibles in 1977, was another key figure in the first wave of collectors. Referred to by Cronk as "our Barbie Dean," De Wein floated through the 1992 convention like a sort of dowager empress. Even with a broken elbow, the doughty widow from Clarksville, Tennessee, managed to comport herself with the dignity one expects from a Southern Lady. She graciously signed copies of her book when new collectors came to pay court.
Although doll aficionados had probably been stockpiling Barbies since 1959, they didn't get organized until the seventies. Back