By Erin Kirsten Stein
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 16, 1997

To Barbie or not to Barbie

Arizona Daily Wildcat Erin Kirsten Stein

This column is about Barbie.

Don't run away yet! Here's the twist - I love Barbie. I collect Barbie. I have 30 to 40 Barbies at home, smiling through their plastic boxes.

Point is, I do not think her an evil tool to promote unhealthy self-image among girls. In fact, do you want to know why Barbie has huge boobs and a tiny waist?

I'll tell you.

When Barbie was first introduced, her doll clothes were made just like 'big people's' clothes. None of this Velcro and Lycra crap. No, her clothes had zippers and real seams and waistbands. Now, to you non-sewing types, here's a bit of trivia: the waist of a garment usually has up to four times as much material as the rest of it. So, to make Barbie look like a normal person - an admittedly slim normal person - they had to make her waist smaller. Barbie's measurements are not meant to create bulimic and anorexic girls, they simply wanted her to fit in her clothes!

OK. So you see the minor obsession I have, and the volumes of knowledge I have about Barbie that no sane person would admit to.

Imagine my horror, when I recently went to Target (a wonderful, wonderful store!) and saw Barbie pimping herself out as a poster girl for Little Suzy Homemaker.

Mattel has introduced four Dress 'n Play sets. They include Makin' Breakfast, Gardenin' Pretty, Country Fair Fun and - horrors of horrors - Cleanin' House.

What's next? Custodian Ken and Squeaky Clean Skipper?

I actually purchased the Cleanin' House set because of this grotesque fascination I have with it. But enough preamble, here's what's in it:

• An outfit for Barbie to clean house in, consisting of a sunflower dotted dress with white cap sleeves and an attached apron.
• A teal vacuum cleaner.
• A teal broom with hot pink bristles.
• A hot pink feather duster (looks like they sheared a Fraggle!).
• A cute brown dog to attack the vacuum cleaner and irritate Barbie.
• Assorted cleaning products, including 409, Pledge, Pine-Sol and Easy-On starch.
• Pink house slippers (they don't even match her dress!).

OK, the fact she's cleaning is fine, because no matter how independent a woman is, she should still vacuum her penthouse once in a while, you know?

But what Barbie is wearing??? A lovely little housedress (the miniskirt version) with sunflowers all over it and an APRON. Not a serious apron that would legitimately keep her little sunflower dress from getting dirty, but a gauzy white thing the size of a Barbie napkin with LACE on the edge.

I nearly fainted in the aisle. What is Mattel doing? If the feminists criticized Barbie for harking back to the Dark Ages when she was an astronaut, a doctor and a business woman (Heather Locklear's Amanda isn't the only executive to wear miniskirts!), what will they say now?

Even though she recently became a dentist, I am incredibly disappointed in Barbie. No one cleans house in a sunflower dress, I'm sorry. Try an old T-shirt and some raggedy jean shorts so frayed you won't wear them in public for fear of exposing your butt (or maybe you wear them in public because they expose your butt).

Mattel also has this new line of Barbie appliances, which come with tiny food items. I was very excited about the minuscule pop bottles and cereal boxes and frosting containers, cause I just love little tiny things like that, but then I noticed that Barbie's fridge had non-fat frozen yogurt. An alarm went off in my head.

I tore my eyes away from the food and looked at the message emblazoned across the box, "Just Like Mom's Kitchen!"

I put down the box and left the Barbie aisle in shame.

What if a girl (or a boy who likes little tiny plastic food items) lives with a single dad? Even if there are two parents, why is it only mom's kitchen? My dad used to cook a lot. And even if a young Barbie owner is living with a single mom, what if that mom can't boil water? What if they eat pizza every night because the single mom has no time or energy to cook? I learned the culinary values of Ramen noodles from my working mother.

I spoke to Lisa McKendall, Mattel's director of marketing communications, seeking the logic behind Cleanin' House. I asked if Mattel was concerned about feminist backlash, since the product is basically the stereotypical '50s housewife.

"Little girls like to pretend to be a grown-up," she said, "and that includes cleaning house.

"They like playing it out through Barbie because it's part of an adult world."

McKendall said little girls see their moms cleaning house and they want to pretend. She hastily added they see their dads cleaning house as well.

In sunflower dresses and lacy aprons?

A weak argument from McKendall, and she ignored my feminist backlash question.

But, to give Mattel credit, it is stepping forward with its Career Fashions dress-up sets. These include a doctor, a police officer, a chef, an artist and khaki outfit which must be safari Barbie or cartographer Barbie.

But the '50s housewife stereotype personified by Barbie with this Cleanin' House set is too much for me.

Barbie is a cultural icon and she does reflect ideals of society. Every girl dreams of a glamorous evening gown with shoes to match; it reflects wealth, beauty and excess for its own sake - the American Dream!

But do we want young Barbie owners dreaming of hot pink feather dusters and Pledge?

Erin Kirsten Stein is a senior majoring in creative writing, journalism and general fine arts studies.