Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [84]
Significantly, there is class differentiation within the Barbie doll line itself; Barbie still maintains the ability to exist in several classes simultaneously. In 1992, for example, "Madison Avenue" Barbie, dressed and coiffed in the style of Ivana Trump, was exclusively available for about sixty dollars at FAO Schwarz, Manhattan's tony Fifth Avenue toy emporium. In the Lionel Kiddie City in Union Square, however, a less prosperous neighborhood, the shelves were stocked with fifteen-dollar "Rappin' Rockin' Barbie—Yo!" dolls packaged with rhythm-generating boom boxes.
Although Madison Avenue Barbie does, in fact, look like Ivana, the doll seems to have been deliberately coded for parody. Her pink and green outfit is not made of natural fibers, nor is her flashy pink teddy. Likewise, Mattel designer Carol Spencer's "Benefit Ball" Barbie—in a splashy blue evening dress with mountains of orange hair—bears a strong resemblance to Georgette Mosbacher. But her coiffure is so huge and her dress is so flamboyant that she, too, seems to parody Mosbacher, which, as Mosbacher is not known for understated dressing, is no mean feat. Of the outfits Barbie might wear to lunch at Le Cirque, Janet Goldblatt's "City Style" Barbie, an off-white Chanel-inspired suit with a small quilted handbag, is the most plausible, particularly on a doll with shorter hair.
Just as the Native American Barbie does not copy the uniform of a specific tribe but reflects an outsider's interpretation of Native American identity, the upper-class Barbies reproduce not real upper-class clothing but an outsider's fantasy of it. They emulate the eighties' rich-person soap-opera look—the look of Dynasty and Dallas—not the pared-down landed-gentry lifestyle deciphered for the middle classes by, say, Martha Stewart.
Then there are the "Gold Sensation" Barbie and "Crystal" Barbie advertised in magazines such as Parade. Priced at $179 and $175 respectively, these "Limited Edition" Barbie dolls can be bought for four "convenient installments" of $44.75 or $43.75. From their red fingernails to their glittering clothes (the Gold Sensation comes with "a 22 karat, gold electroplated bracelet"), these dolls are a proletarian daydream of how a rich person would dress. Fussell would, of course, mock these objects ("Nothing is too ugly or valueless to be . . . 'collected' so long as it is priced high enough," he writes) but I find them vaguely poignant. In her Allure article, Kron observes that it has been many years since, for example, long, brightly painted talons connoted "lady of leisure": they now imply its opposite, as does every other detail on the dolls.
Seeing them in their wildly excessive getups reminded me of an affecting scene in the movie Mystic Pizza. In it, Julia Roberts plays the beautiful daughter of a Portuguese fisherman who dates a patrician young man. When he invites her home to dinner, she chooses a bare, flashy dress (based perhaps on Dynasty notions of upper-class life) that painfully brands her as an outsider. (Class coding is also an issue in Roberts's later movie Pretty Woman, but unlike Mystic Pizza, in which Roberts's sister moves up the class ladder by earning a scholarship to Yale, Pretty Woman suggests that the sole way a woman can ascend socially is by hooking the right mogul— a distasteful message indeed.)
Although some toys reach across class boundaries, others are clearly targeted to a specific social echelon. Dolls in the Pleasant Company "American Girls Collection," for instance, are geared to please middle- and upper-middle-class moms. Seemingly dressed by Laura Ashley, educated by Jean Brodie, and nourished by Martha Stewart, these dolls are almost intimidat-ingly tasteful. Sold with historical novels (about them) and simulated antiques, they are intended to inculcate in their young owners a fondness