Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [81]
To be sure, some of the Dolls of the World are less reductive than others. Malaysian Barbie, which the workers in Mattel's Malaysian factory helped design, gets high marks for authenticity and attractiveness. Ann duCille actually called it beautiful. But Jamaican Barbie is another story. "She looks like a mammy," Eason told me. "She's got the head rag and the apron, and I'm like, 'Why did they pick that slice of life?' When they did the Nigerian Barbie at least they made her a regal person." DuCille is blunter: "That's the one I call the anorexic Aunt Jemima."
The phrase book of "foreign" expressions on Jamaican Barbie's box seems almost calculated to patronize. It includes: "How-yu-du" (Hello), "A hope yu wi come-a Jamaica!" (I hope you will come to Jamaica!), and "Teck care a yusself, mi fren!" (Take care of yourself, my friend!). But to place this in perspective, even English Barbie—a blonde with whom American Barbie allegedly shares a common tongue—is cast in this series as "the other." Her box also features a glossary of English words.
There is a common thread in this, and it involves Mattel's coding of an "American" identity for Americans to emulate. Americans define themselves not just by what they are, but by what they are not: Jamaican, Malaysian, English, Scottish, Italian, Australian—to name but a few of the officially "alien" Barbies. To be "American" is to lose the caricatured ethnicity of the Dolls of the World; yet it is not to lose all ethnicity. In Mattel's "America," as in the one invented by other parts of the entertainment industry, racial diversity is recognized—even authorized—through its visibility. It may be an "easy pluralism," as duCille says, but it is a pluralism nonetheless.
I have to credit Susan Howard, an African-American journalist and Barbie-collector, with pointing this out to me—and with coining the term "designated friend" for Barbie's first pals of color. When we met for an interview, she showed me a Sun Lovin' Malibu Christie, Barbie's black friend from the seventies. Howard considers the doll, which has tan lines, to be educational. "You'd be surprised how many white people don't know that black people tan," she said.
Howard does not hide her hobby; Black Barbie sits like a mascot on her desk at Newsday, and she has others—including a 30th Anniversary Special Edition—at home. Far from remembering Barbie with rage, Howard, who grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and now lives on Long Island, thinks of the doll as "an empowerment tool because she did so many things and she made me feel good about myself." She adds, "I'm sure that some feminists would balk at that idea."
The "empowerment" had to do with the visibility of blacks among Barbie's first friends. In 1968, Mattel's official "America" looked a lot like Howard's integrated neighborhood—and seeing even an imperfect reflection of her world gave her a sense of validation. Unlike Lisa Jones, Howard, in her early thirties, was young enough to have played with Christie, who, while far from her twin, resembled her more closely than did white Barbie. "When you're a kid who basically has no one to play with other than yourself and a few friends, this doll becomes your friend," she told me. "You don't know how much it meant to me that Barbie had a friend like Christie. Because that meant, well, Barbie likes black people. And it may sound silly, but it was important for me to know that Barbie liked someone like me. The proof was in her 'designated friend.' "
CHAPTER NINE
MY FAIR BARBIE
When wrriter Jill Ciment was working on The Law of Falling Bodies, a novel set twenty-five years ago in the lower-middle-class southern California suburb where she grew up, she had a hard time figuring out how her characters should dress. Searching through old issues of Vogue was fruitless; the