BARBIE DOLL GETS HIT WITH A BAD RAP
It was a day like any other in Los Angeles: hot, dusty, dead. I tossed another card at my hat. It missed. Again. The small electric fan tried its best to cool things down. Then I heard her throaty voice.
“Sam? Sam Spade the private eye?”
I looked up at her silhouette in the doorway. Nearby a saxophone wailed.
“That’s me.” I said and motioned for her to sit.
The blonde eased herself into the chair in front of my desk and crossed her legs. She was a looker. Sixty-five years-old-and fourteen inches tall, she had an hourglass figure with no shortage of sand. She dabbed at her moistening eyes. “I can’t stand it anymore, Mr. Spade.”
I looked her over appraisingly. “Tell me about it, doll.”
She turned her baby blues on me. “Call me Barbie,” she said.
I lit a cigarette. “Okay, Barbie Doll. Spill yer guts.”
She sighed and launched into her tale of woe. “I’m tired of being picked on. I’m tired of being the butt of jokes. I’m tired of being accused by jealous…”
“Whoa, sweetheart,” I said. “Slow down, willya?”
She threw her head back, shaking her golden mane. Not a hair moved. “Sorry, Sam. Maybe I should start at the beginning.
A piano tinkled in the next apartment as she began. “I’ve been around for a long time, Sam. I’m probably the bestselling toy in history. Two of me are sold every second. I own more than a billion pairs of shoes. I have an outfit for every moment of the day. I live in a dream house. My boyfriend’s name is Ken.” She paused and looked me straight in the eye.
I tossed a two of hearts at my hat and nodded for her to continue.
“New York Times columnist, Anna Qindlen, said I’m a bad influence on little girls. She hates that I’m thin. She said that if I was a real woman I ‘would not have enough body fat to menstruate.’”
“Quindlen says the message I’ve given to every little girl growing-up in America since 1959 ‘is that the only thing that’s important is being tall and thin and having a big chest and lots of clothes. She said I’m a terrible role model.”
The doll took out a compact and applied some make-up to her face. I took another drag on my cigarette.
“A few years ago,” Barbie said, pouting, “I made a simple statement, ‘math class is tough.’ It was one of 270 phrases I spoke as Teen Talk Barbie. Well, Sam, you’d think I said a four-letter word. Feminists turned purple. They said I was discouraging girls from studying math.
“Meanwhile, my Black Barbie was derided as perpetuating Black stereotypes. My Native American Barbie was criticized for inadequately representing Native Americans. My Growing-up Skipper Barbie was said to be a mix of puberty and violence. Is it any wonder that I need help?”
“Tell me more, doll.”
“I’m a good girl, Sam, I really am. But everyone gets on my case. A doctor in Helsinki says I cause eating disorders in girls. A sheik in Kuwait said little girls should not be allowed to buy me because it’s forbidden by Islam.”
The doll shook her head and continued. “So now they’re changing me, Sam. Smaller chest, wider waist, smaller hips.”
Barbie started crying again. I blew smoke rings in the air. “What do you expect me to do about it, doll?”
Her eyes flashed. “I want you to tell these critics that I’m not to blame. Tell them to turn on their televisions, open magazines. How many overweight, unattractive models do you see? None. Zero. Zip. It’s not just me, Sam. It’s the entire culture.”
I tossed the cards aside, took a long drag on my Camel, and told her to go home. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
I turned on the tube. The doll was right. Every woman in the ads and every actress was thin and gorgeous. Every girl in both the men’s and women’s magazines were so stunning that they were hardly real. This is the American ideal of beauty.
Ideal.
But the other ninety-nine percent of women are not flawless. So, what happens? They feel inadequate. Meanwhile the men watching the tube and ogling centerfolds become dissatisfied with the women around them. The media create dissatisfaction by giving us what we want.
I called the doll. She came right over.
I was blowing smoke rings when she appeared at my door. The saxophone wailed provocatively. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Her hair was a bleached beehive. Lips brick red. Eye shadow thick and black. Eyelashes like spiders. She had a half-eaten twinkie in each hand.
“I’m not taking the rap any more, Sam. They could have left me alone. At least I was the all-American girl: sweet, virginal, and well-groomed. I wasn’t such a bad role model, Sam. But all they did was complain. Okay, then, they can deal with the new Barbie.”
She looked right through me. “That’s right, Sam. This is the new Barbie. No more of those stupid dream houses. No more prom dresses. No more shoes. As for that total nerd, Ken, he’s out of the picture. I’m dating a Reggae star.”
I watched her wiggle out of my office. Lit a camel. The saxophone moaned.
“You Sam Spade,” someone spat.
I looked up. A grimacing soldier stood in the shadows. Face smeared with dirt; an M-16 rifle gripped tightly in his grimy hands.
“Who the h--- are you?” I demanded.
“The name’s Joe. GI Joe. I’ve got some problems, Sam. They say I promote violence. They say I’m a bad role model. They say…”