Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [70]
The similarity between Barbie then and Barbie now was startling. It suggested that the transformations allegedly wrought by feminism had been either merely cosmetic or nonexistent. It was even more uncanny to learn that Western Publishing had resurrected "Queen of the Prom: The Barbie Game" and issued it with two new board games—"Barbie's Dream Date" and "We Girls Can Do Anything."
Although one six-year-old I browbeat into playing We Girls Can Do Anything with me described the game as "BOOOOR-ing," I enjoyed it. Players make "career moves" and endure "career setbacks" to become musicians, actresses, pilots, fashion designers, physicians, or ballerinas. The game's bright fuschia graphics and lurid photos of actual dolls, however, are somewhat garish; grown-ups may require sunglasses to stare at the board. Unlike the Mattel games from the sixties, which featured stylish line drawings of Barbie and her crowd, the new ones are illustrated exclusively with photographs. This no doubt helps young children recognize products, but it does not enhance nascent taste.
Nor is the revised Queen of the Prom identical to the original. Like the new Barbie magazine, the game is aimed at younger consumers—ages five and up. So the odious "Surprise" cards, which had to be read, are gone. Gone, too, are references to school or school clubs. Girls compete based on cars, clothes, looks, and boys. The collecting of female friends, although possible, slows a player down; a boyfriend is the only human trophy required to win. This suggests a certain prescience on the part of the game's makers: long before Thelma and Louise flickered subversively in a studio screening room, they sensed that female bonding was dangerous—and, consequently, to be quashed.
But compared with Barbie's Dream Date, the revised Queen of the Prom might have been written by the editors of Ms. This game isn't merely about winning approbation based on looks, it's about piling up expensive gifts from men. So similar is players' behavior to that of a call girl that it might more aptly be termed "The Hooker Game." Barbie's Dream Date is a race against time; each player's mission is to make Ken spend as much money as possible on her before the clock strikes twelve. When time runs out, players tally up their date and gift cards, and the one with the most cards wins. "If there is a tie, players with the same number of cards count their date cards only," the directions instruct. Like the floozy with the fullest Rolodex, "the girl with the most date cards wins."
Even in the vast contradictory morass that is Barbie history, the idea of We Girls Can Do Anything and the Hooker Game occupying adjacent shelf space is dumbfounding. Yet the more I inquired about the "We Girls" campaign, the more I learned that many male executives loathed it. "I can remember sitting in meetings with just people from the agency—and I won't name names—but the men were very resistant to the 'We Girls' ads," said Barbara Charlebois, who wrote for the original Barbie magazine and remained with Ogilvy & Mather after it acquired Carson /Roberts. "They really thought they were very offensive—well, you know how men are. Anything that's feminist or that says we girls can do anything or anything that says we girls are as good as you boys is very . . . " she trailed off, but I got the picture.
This perception, which, other sources confirm, extended to Mattel itself, made the contradictory threesome—We Girls Can Do Anything, Queen of the Prom, and the Hooker Game—comprehensible. Let 'em take one step forward, the message seemed to be, as long as they take two steps back.
I could end this chapter here, with Barbie sold into virtual white slavery for a dinner, a ski trip, and some bottles of perfume. But there is more to Barbie than that. Little girls know it; I have yet to watch kids play "Let's Fleece Ken" with real dolls—and I have watched