Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [24]
Nevertheless, somebody at Mattel was disquieted by Ken's absent genital and tried to help him compensate. Barbie's clothes were usually accessorized with a matching purse, and purses—boxlike containers—are recognized by Freudians as symbols for female genitalia. Ken's first garments, by contrast, came with long, thin accessories—symbols for the penis he lacked. A long stick with a school pennant accompanied his "Campus Hero" outfit; an electric shaver with a dangling cord accompanied his bathrobe; and his weekend "Casuals," khakis and a T-shirt, came with car keys. (A key is, of course, a male symbol, penetrating a female lock.)
By 1963, Ken's phallic props had become outrageous. He had a hunting outfit with an enormous rifle, a baseball outfit with a very long bat, and a doctor outfit with a pendulous stethoscope. He didn't motor around in a roadster like Barbie, he drove a hot rod. The crudest comment on his genital deficiency, however, came in 1964, with "Cheerful Chef," a backyard barbecue costume that included a long fork skewering a pink plastic weenie.
Barbie's cookout set had featured a spatula, a knife, a rolling pin, and a spoon. She never, ever had either a fork or a weenie. True, her "Suburban Shopper" outfit had been accessorized with vaguely phallic bananas, but they were popping out of her purse—a merging that subliminally suggests heterosexual intercourse. Similarly, her "Picnic Set" included a fishing rod, but its hook had pierced a plastic fish—a vulgar symbol for the female genitals— again evoking heterosexual penetration. The seeming deliberateness of these symbols makes it hard to interpret Ken's sad, solitary sausage as innocent. Likewise, the message on his apron—"Come and get it"—seems a bitter taunt about the genital he will never possess.
After Mattel issued wedding clothes for Barbie and Ken, children clamored for Barbie to have a baby. That, however, was where Ruth drew the line. Pregnancy would never mar Barbie's physique nor progeny compromise her freedom. Just as she does not depend on parents, she would have no offspring dependent on her. Still, Ruth reasoned, if buyers wanted a baby, there must be some way to sell them one. She eventually came up with "Barbie Baby-Sits," an ensemble containing an infant, its paraphernalia, and an apron clearly marked BABYSITTER. The set also came with books: How to Get a Raise, How to Lose Weight, and How to Travel.
"Barbie Baby-Sits" appeared in 1963, a year after the publication of Helen Gurley Brown's best-selling Sex and the Single Girl. And whether it was Brown's influence or an effect of synchronicity, Barbie began to resemble Brown's happily unmarried woman. Ruth refused to give Barbie the trappings of postnuptial life; the doll would be forever independent, subservient to no one.
If Barbie wasn't already Brown's paradigm, her self-help books suggest that becoming it was her goal. The Single Girl, Brown wrote, "supports herself." She also keeps fit and roams the earth on her own; it's fun to meet men in new places. Hence Barbie's reading: How to Get a Raise, How to Lose Weight, and How to Travel—titles reminiscent of Brown's chapter headings—" Nine to Five," "The Shape You're In," and "The Rich, Full Life."
In 1963, Barbie also moved into her "sturdy, colorful chipboard" Dream House, a modest yet well-appointed dwelling, perfect for a Single Girl. "If you are to be a glamorous, sophisticated woman that exciting things happen to, you need an apartment and you need to live in it alone!" Brown orders. Roommates won't do, nor will living at home; but you don't have to take up residence in Versailles, either.
One can't help wondering whether Charlotte read Sex and the Single Girl while she was designing Barbie's 1963 wardrobe. "When a man thinks of a single woman," Brown writes, "he pictures her alone in her apartment, smooth legs sheathed in beige silk pants, lying tantalizingly among dozens of satin cushions, trying to read but not very successfully,