Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [57]
Happily, Barad rallied, and a few days later, with publicist Donna Gibbs adhering to my side like a Secret Service agent, I traversed the wide blue-carpeted halls of Mattel's executive enclave. Without relinquishing the trappings of corporate power—big desk, panoramic view—Barad had created a cozy atmosphere within her sprawling office. The place was thick with potted palms. Upscale collector baby dolls by artist Annette Himsteadt, whose company is owned by Mattel, were sprawled in eerily human positions on a couch. And refulgent in their sequins, the 1992 Empress Bride and Neptune's Fantasy Barbies—outfitted by Bob Mackie—twinkled on her desk.
Barad directed me to a conference table whose legs were planted on a thick Chinese carpet. The deep red rug sat atop wall-to-wall carpeting, and I felt myself sink into it. If Barad had deliberately coded her office to create a sense of softness and femininity, she couldn't have been more effective. Radiant amid the fronds, she was clad in a yellow silk suit with bold color splashes that resembled, on closer inspection, jungle animals. She wore shiny yellow slippers that seemed too perfect to have touched pavement. Nor had she abandoned her trademark bee. I had, of course, seen photos of her, but that did not prepare me for the perfect hair, seamless manicure, and makeup striking enough for television. She made the Barbies look unkempt.
As Andy Warhol's likeness of Barbie beamed down at us from the wall, Barad told how she had met the artist at a publicity party for She-Ra, and, after he revealed his fascination with Barbie, commissioned a portrait of the doll—a bold gesture, it struck me, in keeping with her philosophy of "pushing for the impossible." Inspired, I, too, decided to push, intrepidly asking if, as one of the country's top female executives, she defined herself as a feminist.
"No," she said in a cool voice. "The fact is, I really don't know what that means. There are negative implications and positive implications. I'm very female. And I believe there are many dimensions to being a woman—and in my life I have been blessed with experiencing so many of those dimensions, whether it's being a mother, being a wife, being a friend, being an executive. Being so much. And I want kids to be able to realize all the different sides of being a woman too.
"I've been able to do that through toys," she continued. "Baby dolls teaching mothering and nurturing—the soft tender moments. Barbie saying, 'What's it gonna be like when I grow up?' Or Princess saying, 'I'll protect you.' Or the Heart Family—the whole family situation. It was very much not just a belief in me—but in all the people here in girls' toys—that we were going to explore all the parts of being a girl."
Barad shares with Ruth Handler the ability to disarm an interlocutor. I won't say our interview was exactly a pajama party, but something about that doll-packed room lent itself to girl talk. I found myself experiencing ancient feelings that I thought I had left behind in high school—a consciousness of myself as an owlish drudge dutifully recording, for the minutes of a club meeting, the wisdom of the homecoming queen. I was shaken by the terrible power of childhood archetypes. I felt like Midge.
Soon we were agreeing passionately that Barbie was "forever," as an icon, anyway. But I wondered if her sales could sustain their phenomenal growth. Was there a saturation point? In 1992, the average American girl owned seven Barbies; would twenty soon be the norm?
Barad likened a child's interest in Barbies to a woman's interest in clothes. "I don't know about you," she said, glancing at my outfit so disconcertingly that I checked to make sure I hadn't spilled something on it, "but I would imagine every year you buy something to put in your wardrobe that's new—that makes you feel like it's a fresh year, or it's the beginning of a season, or you have an event that you didn't