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to take their blond selves—rubino or rubina means blond down there—and tan themselves in the sweat of the equatorial jungle sun and give themselves to people that desperately need to learn from them. If Barbie and Ken would come down there with me, I would make sure they have enough work for the summer. But they couldn't drive their van down there, unless it was a four-by-four. And the banditos—if they saw that van, they might want it. So Barbie and Ken might end up having to thumb their way through Guatemala or someplace." He chuckled.

I didn't have the heart to remind him that Barbie and Ken were already there. With their van. And that they probably had taught something to the indigenous people. Just not ethnobotany.

CHAPTER TEN

GUYS AND DOLLS

If people subscribe to the theories of men's movement mythologizer Robert Bly—and the sales of his book Iron John would suggest that they do—gentlemen have preferred blondes since the dawn of history. A "Woman with the Golden Hair" dances through the male unconscious, not a "flesh and blood woman," but a "luminous eternal figure," Bly says. From her face emanates a whisper: "All those who love the Woman with the Golden Hair come to me." Men search for the perfect embodiment of this being, projecting their hunger onto models, centerfolds, flight attendants, and aerobics instructors. But such desire is not exactly sanguine for its objects: "Millions of American men gave their longing for the Golden-Haired Woman to Marilyn Monroe," Bly writes. "She offered to take it and she died from it."

Scion of a sex toy, Barbie, far more than any human, is equipped to withstand such toxic projections. Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite plasticity. "I think if you look at the silhouette of the Playboy Bunny, it looks like a Barbie doll," retired Mattel designer Joe Cannizzaro told me. "So do men want to date a Barbie doll? Probably. But do men notice it? Only if shown. They wouldn't go looking for it."

Well, not at Toys "R" Us, anyway. But according to Dian Hanson, editor of Juggs, Leg Show, and Bust Out!, Barbie's body, even without detailed genitalia, is proportioned to inflame all the common permutations of heterosexual male desire.

Hanson, born in 1951, is one of America's preeminent female pornographers. Unlike that of Susie Bright, editor of On Our Backs, a magazine "for the Adventurous Lesbian," Hanson's audience is primarily straight men. She credits her success to market research: she asks her readers what they want and they tell her. Readers of Leg Show, her magazine for foot fetishists, "tend to be white-collar, educated people with computers," she told me. "They write me a lot. The letters pour in every day. I've asked them to explain: Do you know where your fetish came from? What are your earliest memories? And I've learned a great deal. A lot of what I know, I know from these guys directly."

Hanson does not have the tough look that one might expect from a sultana of smut. Lean, fit, and proportioned like a fashion doll, she wears little makeup and has long, healthy blond hair. Her features are as even as a cover girl's, and her smile is so wholesome she could sell toothpaste. Slightly tan, she radiates a sort of patrician outdoorsiness; one could imagine her teaching sailing or skiing at a tony resort. When I met with her at her SoHo office on a bone-chilling winter day, she was wearing blue jeans and L.L. Bean duck shoes—not what I'd anticipated. Her office, however, did not disappoint: nearly every flat surface was covered with brightly colored genital prostheses or stiletto-heeled pumps—marabou-trimmed mules, rhinestone-studded slippers—many of which, because of Hanson's large feet, were bought in transvestite boutiques.

"One of the reasons my magazines are very successful is because I realize you can't separate sex from love," she explained. "When a man has a breast obsession, he's looking for security and love and blissful, mindless protection." This led her to create Bust Out!, which features narrow-hipped professional sex stars with huge silicone