Barbie Vs. Sindy

I’m not a Tom-boy, but I’m not a ‘girlie-girl’ either. This could be an effect of my general upbringing, or it could be the product of making a consumer choice. I like to think it is a bit of both.

Sometime in the 80s someone made a choice for me, and I have since carried on with their decision. I was given a Sindy doll. I don’t know whom by, and I don’t know which was my first. All I know is that when I reached consciousness sometime in the 90s, I had a large collection of Sindy dolls. There was a mountain climber, a cyclist, a roller skater and a horse rider, as well as an ice skater and a swimmer. Every single one of them dressed as their specialised talent required them too, and their moulded bodies bent adequately to ensure their success in their specialist field.

My cousin had some Barbies. They had frizzy huge hair, and holes in their hands (for rings) and ears (for ear-rings). They couldn’t even walk properly because their feet were moulded to the shape of a plastic Barbie high-heel shoe. My Sindy’s really disliked those Barbies. Those dolls were in my imagination and they lived through me. Their thoughts, ideas and opinions were my own. To this day I still prefer flat shoes to high heels, just like my Sindy dolls did.

It is with this connection that I make my accusation that Barbie is the symbol of the consumer world. She represents consumerism through her own high-maintenance lifestyle: She must have hundreds of pairs of shoes, her shoes must have matching bags and ear-rings, she must have her hair styled at least 5 times a day. She is the original Paris Hilton - a high-life demanding blonde, with the latest car and the best fashion.

The reason she is represents the consumer world so well is because making one purchase does not fulfil Barbie’s needs – several purchases of different accessories are required. Just like Sindy her identity is determined by what she wears, if she is a ballerina she will dress like it. The child playing with the doll understands this example of object interaction, which means it must become part of how that child perceives reality. Barbie’s reckless spending and mass object ownership is a lesson to children everywhere that objects are temporal and can be disposed of easily.

Alvin Toffler accounts a story from Barbie’s earlier years that demonstrates the temporal world.

‘Mattel announced a new improved Barbie doll. The new version has a slimmer figure, ‘real’ eyelashes, and a twist-and-turn waist that makes her more humanoid than ever. Moreover, Mattel announced that, for the first time, any young lady wishing to purchase a new Barbie would receive a trade-in allowance for her old one.

What Mattel did not announce was that by trading in her old doll for a technologically improved model, the little girl of today, citizen of tomorrow’s super-industrial world, would learn a fundamental lesson about the new society: that man’s relationship with things are increasingly temporary.’
(Toffler, 1970, P54)

Barbie has manipulated the consumer world so well that she has managed to destroyed Sindy and any other dolls that tried to compete with her. She has created sub-brands of her own in order to create family and new friends for herself. She is six inches of plastic that is completely in control of her entire plastic world of fantasy and all she wants is more, more, more.

If this is not a symbol of our consumer society then what else could be?