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By Hilary Judd and Myrica Hawker
Birkenstock Barbie: the only Barbie with horizontal feet and comfortable shoes. Dinner Roll Barbie: features love handles, a bucket of chicken and oversized sweats. While they may not be marketed by Mattel in the near future, such folklore reinforce the Barbie phenomenon -- notorious stereotypes and body image issues. USU Director of Folklore Jeannie Banks Thomas profiled this phenomenon and her new book, Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes and Other Forms of Visible Gender, Wednesday at the Haight Alumni Center, to an audience greatly outnumbering the available chairs. "[The book] represents many hours of field work and research," Thomas said, "and currently retails for less than a lot of lines of Barbies." The book studies three aspects of "visible gender," or images that are the most common ways we see gender in everyday life, Thomas said. Yard art, supernatural legends and children's folklore are the forms Thomas outlined, as well as how each affects our visualization and response to gender today. Barbie engenders the same images today as found in centuries-old cemeteries and fine art. Thomas has visited more than 50 cemeteries in North America and Europe, where she found the "eroticized, body beautiful image" in many of the female statues. "Semi-naked women in the cemetery -- what's that about?" Thomas asked. The predominant male image in cemeteries was "the aggressive warrior, the soldier." This same image emerges in American society through the popular action figure G.I. Joe. Stock gender images of men as soldiers, as well as sensual, half-naked women, continue today in yard art, Thomas said. Plastic pink flamingos, "wooden peeing boys," tin Christmas soldiers and other forms of yard art are most popular in the Midwest. Barbie, born in 1959, was the brainchild of Ruth Handler, one of the founders and directors of Mattel. Handler was also a mother, and she watched her children, Barbara and Ken, play with paper dolls. She noticed the dolls were a step up from baby dolls, and wanted to create an "adult doll" for kids, which could help girls learn grooming skills and deal with body changes. "This doll would have breasts," Thomas said, quoting Handler's concept, an idea causing Mattel board members to "freak out." The Barbie controversy about body image continues, which Thomas says is legitimate. Women have a 1 in 100,000 chance of looking like Barbie, while men have a 1 in 50 chance of looking like Ken. While G.I. Joe began in 1964 with realistic body proportions, today's G.I. Joe Extreme model features bigger biceps than any bodybuilder has yet accomplished. "He's projecting body images to young boys that are unattainable . . . you have this enduring figure of a warrior for men," Thomas said, which may account for why a war-mongering, faux body image-promoting G.I. Joe toy receives less heat than a disproportionate, blond bombshell Barbie. The war hero doesn't face a gender double-standard, Thomas said. He can be packaged and sold as a Nazi -- as he was in the 60s -- with little notice or outcry. But Barbie's every hairstyle and hemline make headlines. "For everything you could think of, there's a Barbie," Thomas said, listing a few "Barbies We'd Like To See," such as Blue-Collar Barbie, Crack-Addict Barbie, Graduate School Barbie and Hot Flash Barbie. Mattel used innovative marketing when introducing Barbie by advertising to children. The toy giant now markets to adults, playing on nostalgia, such as the "Dolls of the World" line. "She seems to fascinate us in all levels of culture," Thomas said. Obviously so. Mattel sells two Barbies every second.
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