The Jokes on You

[Daveparts]

The Jokes on You
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com




There is an old joke that goes as follows, “Do you know why Barbie has a dream house and a dream car, but Ken doesn’t? Because they used to be his dream house and dream car.”

Barbie is fifty years old; she is an American icon, a glittering symbol of American capitalism. The teen fashion model who travels the world in lush prosperity, never thinking of how her prosperity is acquired. She is a teaching tool for mass consumption. She says, "To be really happy, you must have more!" You must have lots of clothes and cars and jet planes. It is a wonderful tool to train pliable, childlike minds because it says to children that even if you don’t have these things it is all right for others to have them, no matter what the cost.

Capitalism is good, consumption is good; don’t look, don’t think, just buy. Barbie is as good as her image. This icon of the American toy industry has never been manufactured in America. Her producers globetrot, looking for the cheapest third-world workers to paint on her blue eyes or to glue on her blond hair. She sells the image of the prosperous All-American girl, manufactured by underpaid, third-world teenagers.

Today she is manufactured in China and Indonesia, where real teenage girls sit for ten hours a day on wooden benches painting her blue eyes. Six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, they live twenty to a dormitory and earn around twenty dollars a week, less room and board, of course. Do they think about the irony of what they are manufacturing? The drudgery, the oppressive supervisors who can terminate the women for any reason? Most are young girls from the country, hundreds of miles from home. They are taught quickly, don’t question, don’t speak, don’t ask.

Revenues from Barbie sales have been falling in the United States, the company claims it is due to more competition. Maybe it’s the economy, or maybe parents who see their own American dream slipping away lose the motivation to encourage it in their children. Maybe Barbie has outlived her usefulness in America? Become an outdated, cornball relic like Betty Boop or Mae West and is no longer relevant. Who can say, but Barbie being Barbie she won’t stay where she’s not the center of attention. This American icon is leaving the country and moving to China where the money is. Perhaps Mattel will issue a “Screw You America Barbie,” middle finger extended as she boards her Barbie jet plane headed for the land of new money.

Mattel has opened a new Barbie store in Shanghai, six glittering floors of Barbie consumption, to introduce to a new audience the gospel of buy, spend and consume! Barbie’s new wardrobe features outfits styled by the “Sex in the City" costume designer. Nothing says whorish, boorish, vapid and empty like “Sex in the City.” Superstars of amnesiactic decadence and conspicuous consumption. Why, who wouldn’t want their eleven-year-olds exposed to that lifestyle?

Barbie sales fell 46% this year during the holiday season, so Barbie is leaving; going where she will be more appreciated. “I like her clothes and shoes,” said 11-year-old Li Qiunan, who already owns 14 dolls and seeks more. I wonder if she would be interested in a factory tour?

Mattel seeks to aggressively market in China; 14 dolls are good but 15 is better, or even 20! Barbie is a three billion-dollar a year industry and employs hundreds, if not thousands, of real teenaged girls to project the image of one illusionary teenage girl. The store in Shanghai is the first of many such stores planned worldwide.

Maybe in line with Barbie’s move she could take on a new boyfriend, “Lawyer Bill” or “Attorney Matt.” He could travel the world with Barbie, defending her from lawsuits because of the lead paint often found on her products. “Lawyer Bill” could maintain, as Mattel did in 2007, that the lead paint was the responsibility of contractors. The company promised to step up inspections and quietly admitted responsibility for faulty designs. What else would you expect “Lawyer Bill” or “Attorney Matt” to say under the circumstances?

Barbie’s boyfriend, like Barbie, has to be fabulously wealthy. She would never date “CPA Dan” or “Auto Mechanic Dave.” Why do you think she dropped GI Joe? He wasn’t even an officer. Maybe she could date a Senator, maybe “Senator Craig?” No, that wouldn’t work. She could date an athlete. Maybe, “Athlete Alex” and she could put on her nurse Barbie outfit and inject him with er, ah, vitamins! Yeah, vitamins!

Barbie’s defenders will argue that Barbie is a child’s toy offering fun and fantasy, which is true. But it is the fantasy that she offers and the goals that she represents so well in actuality that chafes. Wealth at the expense of the poor, opulence and garish prosperity, all rightfully earned by Barbie’s hard work as a teen fashion model. Selling the American dream that is rapidly becoming an American fantasy for most workers. Their wages falling, their unemployment rising, Barbie does just what any good corporate citizen would do, she leaves town and goes where the money is.

She exports the American Dream that is no longer American; she exports the corporate wet dream disguised as the American Dream. Capitalism is good, consumption is good, don’t look, don’t think, just buy. Meanwhile, back at the Barbie store, children can buy clothes and model them on a real runway. Six-year-old Zhu Yunyao’s grandfather spent 1,000 yuan ($146) -- almost half the average monthly urban wage in China -- on a designer doll, outfits and Yunyao’s turn on the runway.

“Do you know why Barbie left Ken?”

Duh, he doesn’t have a penis!

“Do you know why Ken didn’t mind Barbie leaving?”

Isn’t it obvious?

[TlalocW]

1. Take a faltering economy mix it with a symbol of consumerism

Then throw in my belief that most adults hate Barbie, and yeah, sales are going to plummet, and I say good.

The last time (many years ago) I shopped for a Barbie for my niece, my sister (her mother) and I wandered the pink aisle in either a Walmart or a Toys R Us along with several other parents, eyes glazed over, all fruitlessly searching for the exact outfit/friend/accessory that every child had to have or otherwise Christmas would be ruined. Finally, I started asking my sister in a loud voice which Barbie her daughter was looking for and offering helpful suggestions: Was it Phone Sex Barbie? Shoplifter Barbie with bulky overcoat and orange prison jumpsuit? Dominatrix Barbie and Slave Ken? My sister was mortified, but all the other parents were laughing appreciatively. That's when I knew those who have to buy her, hate her as much as I do.

TlalocW

[Turbineguy]

2. I don't know that those who

came up with the Barbie Doll thought about all that. But there do seem to have been some unintended consequences along the way.

I had a bizarro moment a number of years ago looking a a company mag where I worked. We shipped containers around the world. The magazine cover showed a young Thai woman who worked in a factory making dolls for the American market. She wore a clean blue factory coat with the title "Permanent Employee" embroidered in English under her name, written in Thai.

She was holding the product, in its box with the doll's name and the words "A True Friend!"

I don't know if those who edited the magazine saw the many metaphors in that simple picture.

People have been sailing trade routes since ??? and it was generally agreed that on balance, life was better for it.

[tomreedtoon]

3. Mr. Cox, blame Mattel.

Mattel deliberately kept Barbie consumer-oriented throughout her career. Obsessively so. For instance...

Marvel Comics once tried to create a comic book involving Barbie. They wanted to make an interesting comic for girls to read (after decades of comics only being for geeks with breast and blood fetishes). The comic didn't last because Mattel refused to have Barbie represent any kind of attitude or get involved in any kind of adventure or challenge. They wanted her to be an empty vessel into which any girl could pour her dreams, and having her take a stand on ANYTHING would limit their audience.

Walt Disney World briefly tried a "Barbie" show in EPCOT, in the American Adventure exhibit. The show was all about Barbie's costume changes and moving through different scenery. You could tell the show was badly attended, and the script written for the show had sarcasm in it that even the normally stoic Disney couldn't avoid. At one point the actress playing Barbie said "I hope it doesn't mess up my hair," and Ken replied "Who cares? It's plastic anyway."

Point taken: Mattel successfully sued the Bratz dolls out of existence for stealing Barbie's materialism and couching it in more modern terms, although the Bratz dolls never got as far as their attitudes suggested: no vibrator sets, butch lesbian wardrobes or strip club play sets.

[Demeter]

4. Barbie Was Never My "Dream Vehicle"

She came out when I was 3. I never really liked her. Her "assets" were much too phony, her wardrobe much too pink. Her feet, along with the rest of her, were useless, her joints immobile, and I did not want to grow up like her, no way, no how.

Maybe I was born a feminist. Maybe I just had better taste. It was a visceral thing.

Some girls are treated like sex objects the day they are born--usually with unhappy results. Some are treated like people. Barbie was never "people". I couldn't relate.