Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [90]
Barbara, a comely redhead now well into her fifties, has a policy of not giving interviews. The numerous snapshots of her in Ruth Handler's family album, however, suggest that she is less allergic to being photographed. "It's a shame she won't talk because she owes a lot to that little doll," Ken said. "She used to sell towels," he continued, referring to a bath shop she once ran in Beverly Hills. "And then she decided she wasn't going to sell them anymore. I think she likes to play golf. She used to like to play tennis, then she hurt her leg or something . . . she's had kind of an easy life."
Talking with Ken was a little like playing Jeopardy! His conversation leapt from virology to Verdi, from the frontiers of medicine to Met musical director James Levine. I found myself thinking of Nick in 35-Up—the professor who claims to have close ties to his family, yet who, because of his education, is effectively living on another planet.
"I don't think we've ever had a Barbie in the house," Ken said with amusement. "Philosophically, I didn't want my children to play with it. My oldest [daughter] is so uniquely talented that I've always felt that any gesture toward looking a certain way or being a certain way was not a positive thing. If she had said, 'Dad, get me a Barbie,' I would have gotten it for her. But she knew about it; she'd seen it; she never asked—so I never got it." Samantha, his oldest, currently makes her living as a psychic; but his second daughter, Stacy, an art student, also expressed no interest in the doll. Nor did his son, Jeff, a high-school senior.
"I felt a lot of indignation about the effect the dolls had on impressionable children who are either overweight or couldn't make themselves into that image and felt inferior as a result," he told me. "This bimba—and I say 'bimba' because it's feminine—never has a serious thought. And she has a figure no young lady could ever achieve without a severe anorexic leaning or surgery."
When I suggested that these days Barbie has a fairly impressive resume, he cut me off. "They're not really careers—they're putting on a costume and pretending. . . . It's no different than some sort of drag show."
Ken's parents don't understand his irritation. "They've never meant for this doll to have—they never see the negative side of it. They don't understand it; it's beyond their ken, to make a pun . . . to them it's just good play. And yet they're very vain people, my parents. They care if you're a little overweight. They care if—I had lost a few pounds because I got these little critters that I always pick up when I go to South America. And my parents said, 'Gee, you look terrific—you lost five, ten pounds or something.' "
Critters or no, Handler is rhapsodic about South America. The curative values of the virgin rain forest are not merely those of the plants he gathers; they are metaphorical. They have to do with the purity of the air, of a life unstriated by social class and uncluttered with material possessions. Never a beachgoer when he lived in Los Angeles, he loves the South American shore. "I like walking down the beach and watching the fisher-men fish and the pigs run wild. It's nice going to the beach with a bunch of pigs.
"I'll tell you what I would like to do with Barbie and Ken if they were to suddenly come to life," he said, "provided they could learn enough Spanish because nobody speaks English down where I go—most of them speak Indian languages. I would like to take Barbie and Ken and train them as ethnobotanists, so that they J would take the skills they learned at the university at Pepperdme or Malibu or wherever they go to school, and work with the indigenous people. Teach them how to tell time with a wristwatch. Motivate them in learning the skills of their antecedents, through the shamans, who are still alive."
He grew more animated. "I'd like Barbie and Ken