Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [54]
Barbie's 1986 astronaut incarnation certainly weighs in on the side of glamour. When Barbie first blasted off in 1965, she wore a baggy gray spacesuit. By 1986, you wouldn't catch her in that kind of shmatte. She comes with a hot pink miniskirt, a clear plastic helmet, sleek pink bodysuit, even silver space lingerie. "I thought Barbie would dress if she were on the moon," said Carol Spencer, the outfit's designer.
She-Ra, Princess of Power, is another Mattel toy from this period that explores the link between female strength and female beauty. Promoted with the slogan, "The fate of the world is in the hands of one beautiful girl," She-Ra, a five-and-a-half-inch action figure, was introduced as the sister of Mattel's He-Man in 1985, the same year as Day-to-Night Barbie. He-Man by then required no introduction. On the market since 1982, he and his fellow Masters of the Universe, based on a popular children's television show, were by 1984 second in sales only to Barbie.
She-Ra inhabits a world called Etheria, a curious mix of Middle Earth and Rodeo Drive. From what the catalogue terms its "plush rug and free-standing fireplace" to its "clothes tree for shields, swords and capes," She-Ra's Crystal Castle is a sort of Valhalla 90210, populated by sturdy, breast-plated females reminiscent of the biker Valkyries in Charles Ludlum's Wagnerian satire, Der Ring Gott Farblonjet. There is a villain named Catra ("Jealous Beauty!" the catalogue calls her), a secret agent named Double Trouble (who literally has two faces), a boyfriend named Bow, and several assorted allies including Castaspella, an "enchantress who hypnotizes." Because of their long, combable hair and their sparkling outfits the figures were introduced as "fashion dolls," but this group doesn't just change its clothes. Children can use the dolls to act out a struggle between females for the title of "most powerful woman in the Universe."
Although She-Ra is not outfitted for the boardroom, the doll, perhaps even more than Day-to-Night Barbie, seems to be an instructional tool for corporate achievement. She-Ra's state of nature is a state of perpetual war. All the inhabitants are armed, and some of them are dangerous. Women are designated as jealous, manipulative (spell-casting), and Janus-faced. And of all the weapons each doll possesses, perhaps the most potent is her beauty.
While She-Ra was not a flop—in the first of her two years on the market, she generated about $65 million in domestic sales—she never approached Barbie. Some say this is because the dolls were too robust. "They looked like lady wrestlers," observed collector Beauregard Houston-Montgomery. But I suspect She-Ra's short life was predicated on metaphor. No matter what she wears, Barbie is a female fertility archetype. She-Ra, by contrast, lacked Barbie's pronglike feet; she and her pals could not plunge their toes into the earth, they merely stood solidly upon it. They had no totemic link to the power of the Great Mother. Their abundant hair and radioactive eye makeup are not enough. If Barbie is pure physical yin, they are, alas, rather yang.
Barad was inspired to create She-Ra and her world after a conversation with her sister, who had disparaged toymakers for inflicting silly, frilly playthings on American daughters. "It seemed time to offer little girls a role model who also had strength and power," Barad told Working Woman in 1990. And to play out the other early-eighties fantasy—"having it all," where "all" referred to children and a career—Barad invented the Heart Family, a Barbie-sized couple that, unlike Barbie and Ken, were married and had a brood