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Speaker 1: From House to works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Kristen h Molly Molly. As we speak,
Speaker 1: every second, two Barbies are being sold somewhere in the world. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is that's astounding. That's a lot of Barbies. That's
Speaker 1: according to Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie. Yep, lots of
Speaker 1: Barbies being sold. And Barbies, I think are sort of
Speaker 1: the one thing that I mean, if you're in a
Speaker 1: name like ten things you think of when you think
Speaker 1: of women and their toys, I guess you come up
Speaker 1: with Barbie. Yeah, Barbie's the most popular toy in the world.
Speaker 1: She is the queen of toys. But truth be told, Molly,
Speaker 1: I never owned a Barbie. That doesn't surprise me, Kristen, Yeah,
Speaker 1: me neither. Um. My mom really wasn't into her busty figure,
Speaker 1: so I got cabbage patch dolls instead, which kind of
Speaker 1: looked like sexy potatoes. Yeah. I had Barbies. I got um,
Speaker 1: I had about three, I think, and but I never
Speaker 1: got Barbie. Closed from the store. I inherited all my
Speaker 1: mom's Barbie clothes, which were hands owned by my grandmother.
Speaker 1: So my Barbie, I think, was a little bit more
Speaker 1: stylish than other Barbies with clothes from my grandma. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty cute. A lot of Grandma was pretty uh
Speaker 1: gretty hip. Grandma made a corduroy suit for Barbie that
Speaker 1: she rocked like. It was like, give that girl a
Speaker 1: job argue with a corduroy suit. Mommy, do you think
Speaker 1: your mom would have been as into Barbie though she
Speaker 1: knew about her, her her sexy predecessor. I am shocked.
Speaker 1: I was shocked to learn about barbie sordid and dark
Speaker 1: past has a sex doll. Let's talk about this. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about Barbie's Barbie's secret past. Um. On July, we're
Speaker 1: in Germany. It's after World War two, is in did
Speaker 1: things are a little chaotic days, probably dark days. And
Speaker 1: there's a German tabloid that's still in existence, actually called
Speaker 1: what's it called Christian. I'm not a native German speaker,
Speaker 1: so I apologize if I do not pronounce this correctly,
Speaker 1: but I did look the pronunciation up on the internet,
Speaker 1: and it is uh as close as I can get
Speaker 1: build z tongue. And on that day, July, a cartoon
Speaker 1: called Lily was featured for the first time. And Lily
Speaker 1: was a saucy little dame. Okay, she was. She was blonde,
Speaker 1: very busty, rarely wore much more than a bra and
Speaker 1: some newspaper across her lab and she was basically a
Speaker 1: gold digger. She was out for for money. She always
Speaker 1: dated these fat cats who didn't treat her well, but
Speaker 1: as long as they bought her clothes and diamond necklaces,
Speaker 1: she was happy. And she always said little sassy things
Speaker 1: that the German Men just loved. But really she had
Speaker 1: to make do right. The war had sort of forced
Speaker 1: her into a very poor state, and rather than you know,
Speaker 1: be drugged down by it, she wanted to be provided for.
Speaker 1: I think that's sort of a natural response after after
Speaker 1: a war, sort of Scarlett o'harah, he will be with
Speaker 1: fat cats is a natural response to wartime poverty. Maybe so, Molly,
Speaker 1: so Barbie taught me. Whatever the case, Uh, Lily became
Speaker 1: such a popular character that in nineteen fifty five they
Speaker 1: decided to turn her into a doll, bring her into
Speaker 1: the three D world of doll and she wasn't I mean,
Speaker 1: she wasn't a doll in the sense that little girls
Speaker 1: played with her. No. No, Lily was not marketed for
Speaker 1: for babies. As we mentioned, it was sort of a
Speaker 1: sex doll for adult men. I mean she was only
Speaker 1: only seven inches long, um or eleven inches me. She
Speaker 1: wasn't the full size sex dolls who might imagine today. Right,
Speaker 1: We're not talking about like a blow up doll or anything.
Speaker 1: She was just sort of a funny little bachelor gift
Speaker 1: that guys would give each other. She would usually wear
Speaker 1: saucy little outfits. Um, I've seen one Lily doll wearing
Speaker 1: just a little little black nightie. And uh, if you
Speaker 1: if you look at her face closely, she she has
Speaker 1: these really uh I keep saying saucy. She has these
Speaker 1: really pouty lips, and her eyes look off to the
Speaker 1: side sort of. Um, she doesn't even make eye contact
Speaker 1: with She kind of has bedroom eyes, right. And one
Speaker 1: of the taglines was whether I don't know if you
Speaker 1: want to say this in your German X, but one
Speaker 1: of the taglines was whether more or less naked Lily
Speaker 1: is always discreet? Yeah, she was obviously advertised as you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of a funny little toy. And I read
Speaker 1: this one account about how German men would sometimes put
Speaker 1: her on their dashboard in their car, and and friends
Speaker 1: of theirs would like to just pick up her skirt
Speaker 1: every now and then. They're pretty easily entertained after the war,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, sex toys back then evidently were far
Speaker 1: more dame than sex toys now. But anyways, a whole
Speaker 1: lot of podcast So Molly, So let's say that you're
Speaker 1: on vacation and you see this doll. You got a
Speaker 1: little girl at home, and you have been kind of
Speaker 1: frustrated that all she has to do is play with
Speaker 1: like paper dolls and baby dolls. Yeah, the dolls marketed
Speaker 1: for girls back then were um, like you said, other
Speaker 1: paper dolls that would depict you know, women, women, older women,
Speaker 1: curve or like Lily or the actual three D dolls
Speaker 1: that they would play with were uh, mostly just kind
Speaker 1: of pot bellied, pre pubescent girls. No boobs, no hips,
Speaker 1: none of that. So let's say you're a woman who
Speaker 1: wants your daughter to play with more than just you know,
Speaker 1: these two extremes of the thing. You want her to
Speaker 1: have sort of a maybe a relatable role model and
Speaker 1: you're on vacation, you pick up a lily dollah, in fact,
Speaker 1: you pick up three, and you go home and you
Speaker 1: start a worldwide doll empire. Tell us how that happened, Kristen, Well,
Speaker 1: Molly Uh, That exact scenario happened to a woman named
Speaker 1: Ruth Handler. Now Ruth Handler happened to have just started
Speaker 1: a company with her husband, Elliott, called Mattel. I like,
Speaker 1: where this is guy? Yeah. Elliott and Ruth moved out
Speaker 1: to California during World War Two and they got into
Speaker 1: the plastics business and they started making plastic picture frames
Speaker 1: and then somehow that spiraled into ukulele. The first big
Speaker 1: hit was this plastic ukulele that they made, and it
Speaker 1: was all these kids loved it sold a ton, and
Speaker 1: so eventually Mattel decided to go into the toy business.
Speaker 1: They wanted to take over the toy industry. And after
Speaker 1: World War Two you have this boom in consumerism, and
Speaker 1: as companies are looking for new ways to market things,
Speaker 1: they discovered that kids are actually a whole consumer group
Speaker 1: all to their own. And with the debut of The
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse Show actually in ninety five, that really sort
Speaker 1: of set off this trend. Of advertising directly to kids.
Speaker 1: So all of this is going on with sort of
Speaker 1: the revolutionizing of the American toy industry. Mattel is taking off.
Speaker 1: Ruth Handler decides to jet set off to Switzerland. And yes,
Speaker 1: she sees none else then Lily sitting in a shop window,
Speaker 1: and she thinks she's adorable. She doesn't think that she's
Speaker 1: some some sexy little novelty for German bachelor men. No,
Speaker 1: she sees a new playmate for her daughter. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: has this daughter, Barbara, who um, I think maybe she
Speaker 1: was ten or twelve at the time, and she had
Speaker 1: noticed that whenever Barbara and her her girlfriends would play
Speaker 1: with her paper dolls, they would always choose see adult women,
Speaker 1: and she thought that that was their way of practicing
Speaker 1: for adulthood, right like you would sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: pretend to be a mom, pretend to you know, have
Speaker 1: a girl playing house maybe things that they saw their
Speaker 1: moms doing, and they were start of practicing that role
Speaker 1: through their dolls exactly. But aside from like I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: aside from the paper dolls, there were no other sort
Speaker 1: of physical dolls that they could really take the clothes
Speaker 1: on and off of, brush their hair all of that.
Speaker 1: So when Ruth Handler saw Lily, she bought three and
Speaker 1: brought them back to the US to show give one
Speaker 1: to her daughter, Barbara, and then you see other two
Speaker 1: as models for a new doll for Mattel. And since
Speaker 1: Barbara was sort of the you know, uh inspiration for
Speaker 1: buying Lily, they named this new doll Barbie Barbie. What
Speaker 1: do you know? Now, if you hold up a an
Speaker 1: original Lily doll with the original Barbie, they look pretty similar.
Speaker 1: Ruth Handler did have sort of a hard time convincing
Speaker 1: the all male design staff at Mattel that they really
Speaker 1: should go for put all this energy into making a
Speaker 1: new doll, But once it finally happened, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty painstaking process. They went over to Japan to the
Speaker 1: factories too, because they wanted to craft this perfect doll,
Speaker 1: and when they were deciding how to designer, they pretty
Speaker 1: much kept the same figure as Lily, this very curvaceous bombshell.
Speaker 1: It did take off I guess the original. It was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty made up, had a lot of trollop paint on, yes,
Speaker 1: sort of downplayed all of that, and um, but her
Speaker 1: eyes still the original Barbie doll still had that sideward
Speaker 1: sideways gaze. She debuted at the nineteen fifty nine New
Speaker 1: York Toy Fair wearing saucy heels and a black and
Speaker 1: white striped strapless one piece swimsuit and some very classy sunglasses.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the reasons we should probably
Speaker 1: mention here that she kept the kind of figure that
Speaker 1: would let her wear this saucy spoast did she keep
Speaker 1: saying is that when they were designing clothes for this
Speaker 1: new doll, to get the clothes to fit right and
Speaker 1: not just look like these shapeless move moves, basically they
Speaker 1: needed to have curves for the clothes to fall on
Speaker 1: because they were using real fabric used for real people,
Speaker 1: and it didn't have sort of the give that tiny
Speaker 1: people need, and so it was basically just to keep
Speaker 1: the clothes looking shapely. So the funny thing about this
Speaker 1: debut of Barbie, now the most buler toy in the world,
Speaker 1: is that she really did not make waves at the
Speaker 1: New York Toy Fair. The manufacturers or the boy store
Speaker 1: owners really kind of couldn't care less at first about her.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't imagine that it would be sort of the
Speaker 1: thing to do to buy real, big, big booby doll,
Speaker 1: well exactly, Mattel had a pretty pretty big task on
Speaker 1: their hand of figuring out how exactly to market this
Speaker 1: very busty doll. Because when they were serving before they
Speaker 1: put her out on the market, but serving mothers to
Speaker 1: see whether or not they would buy this for their daughter.
Speaker 1: A lot of mothers were very concerned about barbies bus size.
Speaker 1: They thought that it would that their husbands would be
Speaker 1: a little more into Barbie than they should be. So
Speaker 1: they brought in this advertising guru named Ernest Dicter to
Speaker 1: figure out how exactly to dive into the female psyche
Speaker 1: and get those women to buy their daughters Barbies. And
Speaker 1: he came up with a pretty ingenious plan, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Instead of sort of running away from this potential scandal um,
Speaker 1: he said, why don't you use this as a teaching device.
Speaker 1: Why don't you say, here's this very well dressed, attractive doll.
Speaker 1: Don't you want to grow up and be well dressed
Speaker 1: and attractive. Then learn these lessons about what an ideal
Speaker 1: feminine appearances. So instead of trying to hide Barbies insane
Speaker 1: bus line and hips, he said, emphasize them. Emphasize how
Speaker 1: you look in a swimsuit, and as you can just
Speaker 1: see from a line like that, this is the thing
Speaker 1: that's gonna get Barbie in trouble much much later. And
Speaker 1: it didn't take a long time for this marketing to
Speaker 1: really take off. I think it by the by the
Speaker 1: end of the first year of her being on the market,
Speaker 1: little girls were buying Barbies everywhere. She was just flying
Speaker 1: off the shelf. And at that point she was she
Speaker 1: was marketed as a teen fashion model. So it's pretty
Speaker 1: brilliant of Mattel because that way, if she's a fashion model,
Speaker 1: fashion models need what clothes, clothes, lots and lots of clothes.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't long before Barbie's boyfriend Ken came along.
Speaker 1: He came around in nine and just like Barbie, as
Speaker 1: a tribute to Ruth Handler's daughter, Ken was named for
Speaker 1: her son. So basically, um, though many a girl has
Speaker 1: probably you know, let Barbie and Can have their way
Speaker 1: with each other, you're actually playing with um siblings. It's
Speaker 1: a little incestuous and maybe I don't know, maybe that's
Speaker 1: why Mattel never let Barbie and Can get married or
Speaker 1: have babies. Well, I mean, Barbie did have quite a
Speaker 1: few dream weddings as I recall, but I think they were.
Speaker 1: But Barbie. Mattel has always been very careful to keep
Speaker 1: Barbie's single, never really had I mean, you've had Barbie
Speaker 1: in a wedding dress, but she she's had so many
Speaker 1: careers in her in her lifetime, right, I think that
Speaker 1: Mattel was trying to show, you know, you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: need the man Ken was always an optional accessory. Um,
Speaker 1: but you could have a lot of careers you could have,
Speaker 1: you know, it could be a doctor, a veterinarian, a
Speaker 1: race car driver, a McDonald's cashier, shoot for the Stars,
Speaker 1: really Dallas cowboy, cheerleader. And one of the first big
Speaker 1: makeovers that that Barbie underwent was the release of Malibu Barbie,
Speaker 1: the first Melaibu Barbie in nineteen seventy one. She was
Speaker 1: a little tanner, she had more of the platinum blonde
Speaker 1: hair that we think of when we think of Barbie today.
Speaker 1: And for the first time, she looked at you straight on.
Speaker 1: No more of those sideways, tawdry glances. Barbie was looking
Speaker 1: at you right in the eye. But eventually, Kristen, what
Speaker 1: Mattel had to look right in the eye was the
Speaker 1: fact that it wasn't always going to work to sell
Speaker 1: Barbie as this sort of female role model. Eventually someone
Speaker 1: did the math and figured that with Barbie's thirty eight
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty four measurements, she may not have been able
Speaker 1: to menstruate. I mean, she is a skinny girl. She
Speaker 1: uh she, you know, to be fair, it's sort of
Speaker 1: an unrealistic body image. And so if your ad campaign
Speaker 1: is built around teaching girls, you know, look like Barbie,
Speaker 1: learned to grow up like Barbie, then that's that's a
Speaker 1: ton of red bells right there. There are bells, red, red,
Speaker 1: red flags. It's a ton of red flags. Right. And
Speaker 1: in Ninete Mittel downsized Barbie a little bit. They gave
Speaker 1: her a little plastic surgery, but she's still just as
Speaker 1: cravacious as she ever was. He's a busty girl, right
Speaker 1: And U this this whole connection between negative body image
Speaker 1: in Little Girls and Barbie has been referred to as
Speaker 1: the Barbie syndrome. But I gotta say, Molly, and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out whether or not this Barbie syndrome exists,
Speaker 1: the research is a little lacking. Really. There hasn't been
Speaker 1: a lot of the the articles about how you know,
Speaker 1: Barbie is evil and she's promoting bad self esteem. Were
Speaker 1: mostly anecdotal and opinionment base. The one study I think
Speaker 1: in two thousand came out in two thousand four found
Speaker 1: nixed results when they were surveying girls from six to
Speaker 1: eighth grade about their views on Barbie. Some liked her,
Speaker 1: some didn't, just kind of just it was a mixed bag,
Speaker 1: nothing conclusive about whether or not she was actually chilling
Speaker 1: girl self esteems. So it's it's possible that you could
Speaker 1: play with barbies and not be completely sure you played
Speaker 1: with destroid. Yeah, I played with barbies, but there was
Speaker 1: a there was a definite moment, and I hear I
Speaker 1: hear anecdotally that this is sort of true across the board,
Speaker 1: where you kind of you start torturing your Barbies as
Speaker 1: a way to uh, you know, you know, sociologists will
Speaker 1: have a field day with this. But I think that
Speaker 1: it's been described in some ways is sort of renouncing
Speaker 1: your childhood and putting all of that away and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, now I am no longer playing with dolls,
Speaker 1: I'm no longer buying into dressing up all the time,
Speaker 1: and I'm moving forward. But what are they moving forward to? Kristen,
Speaker 1: have they been I'm still not convinced that they haven't
Speaker 1: been damaged by Barbies. For example, Kristen, here, I've got
Speaker 1: this for you. What do you make of the barbie
Speaker 1: who said math class is tough? Molly? Okay? That was
Speaker 1: that was bad. Mattel definitely had egg on its face
Speaker 1: after that. But they pulled that barbie from the shelf,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, yeah, I mean all of Barbies pink.
Speaker 1: Everything in her life is pink. It's all about clothes,
Speaker 1: she's got the car. Everything is very consumer oriented for sure.
Speaker 1: But do you think that maybe Barbie epitomizes a certain
Speaker 1: gender role. And let me give you an example. There's
Speaker 1: this big thing called the Barbie Liberation Organization and this
Speaker 1: was based on New York City. And what they would
Speaker 1: do is they did buy Barbies that had the voice boxes,
Speaker 1: and they buy g I Joes that had voice boxes,
Speaker 1: and they'd switched the voice boxes. So, you know, one day,
Speaker 1: a little Johnny opens up a g I Joe that says,
Speaker 1: let's plan our dream wedding? Or will I ever have
Speaker 1: enough clothes? Zany Environnie would say, you know, eat crap
Speaker 1: and die, or vengeance is mine and it was meant
Speaker 1: to show that Barbie really is kind of um imparting
Speaker 1: these sort of unbair gender stereotypes onto a girl. So
Speaker 1: if they think that, you know, they have to grow
Speaker 1: up and care about a dream wedding and buy pink
Speaker 1: convertible and live in a dream house, absolutely I think
Speaker 1: that you can't. You can't get away from the fact
Speaker 1: that that Barbie definitely stands for stereotypical generals. But to
Speaker 1: Mattel's credit, Barbie has been CEO of a company, president, astronaut.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, at least at least she's got
Speaker 1: a job. She's a working woman. She's always been a
Speaker 1: working woman. She has a working woman. She's not like
Speaker 1: the Lilies of Old who just waited for Ken to
Speaker 1: come around. And as we mentioned, she never married Ken.
Speaker 1: She dumped Ken actually in two thousand. Before she dumped Ken,
Speaker 1: she's like, I'm tired of dating my brother. This is weird,
Speaker 1: been weird for long enough, and as of now, I
Speaker 1: believe she's still single. I think that there was a
Speaker 1: surfer dude for a while, but he was just a rebound. Well,
Speaker 1: whatever the case, whether whether Barbie really has the stronghold
Speaker 1: over over girls in her self esteems there there are
Speaker 1: some new girls on the block who are threatening to
Speaker 1: take over Barbie's territory. Really, are they just as evil
Speaker 1: as Barbie? Um? Well, let's say that they are not
Speaker 1: as uh there as prim really? Uh? Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of a little little doll line called Brats with
Speaker 1: a z o? Chris, and I know how you feel
Speaker 1: about brat I gotta say, Brat's they just freaked me out.
Speaker 1: I don't know, why do they freak you out more
Speaker 1: than just a Barbie? And I'm naturally proportionate Barbie, right,
Speaker 1: They're definitely they aren't as curvaceous as Barbie. But Brett's
Speaker 1: just have a little more sauce, if you will. They've
Speaker 1: got a lot more makeup on. They're wearing tiny tops,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, they just look they just look
Speaker 1: a little racy to me. Call me, call me a prude,
Speaker 1: but grandma, I know, I'm kind of my grandma sometimes.
Speaker 1: But girls love them. Brat's were flying off the shelf
Speaker 1: and Mattel kind of got freaked out, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, Matel filed a suit against the Brat's doll manufacturer,
Speaker 1: m g A Entertainment for alleged copyright and intellectual property
Speaker 1: rights violations because a designer, I believe at Mattel, who
Speaker 1: was working on working on Barbie at the time, then
Speaker 1: went over to mg A Entertainment and started working on Brats,
Speaker 1: so they thought he was giving some some secret information
Speaker 1: over they might actually own, and Mattel Mattel won the suit.
Speaker 1: And I think right now brats are not currently being manufactured,
Speaker 1: but still you were probably behind this whole suit, Christian,
Speaker 1: because I know you have hatred for Brat's in your heart,
Speaker 1: but that's not going to help you get rid of
Speaker 1: all the other wannabes. I mean, there are Hannam Montana dolls.
Speaker 1: They're high school musical dolls. You're not going to get
Speaker 1: away from dolls. And I gotta you know, we gotta
Speaker 1: say that Barbie did also follow up on Brats with
Speaker 1: the mycene Barbie. What was that Barbie? It kind of
Speaker 1: looked like a brat's version of Barbie, and people people
Speaker 1: made criticize matel for that. They kind of pointed it
Speaker 1: and laughed. And I guess maybe it's just generational. We
Speaker 1: grew up with them, Maybe we grew up with more
Speaker 1: properly dressed Barbies, and it's I mean, I never had
Speaker 1: a Barbie with a halter topped to you. Well, I
Speaker 1: never had a Barbie at well my Barbie maybe because
Speaker 1: my grandmother made the clothes while she was snazzy. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, she didn't have like a one piece
Speaker 1: from suit. She didn't have a bikini, whereas I think
Speaker 1: that now Beach Barbie or whatever their name for beach
Speaker 1: Barbie is, probably probably has a bikini. Yea. Well, Barbie's
Speaker 1: definitely not hurting for cash, not ry for cash. And
Speaker 1: I will say, you know, I've been a little hard
Speaker 1: on Barbie, but I do think it's can be like
Speaker 1: an imaginative plaything. Like my Barbie has got into a
Speaker 1: lot of fun scrapes. They learned a lot about playing
Speaker 1: with My Barbies, about life and love and tearing the
Speaker 1: Kendall's head off, which happened more than once. But um yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know though that I was playing with a
Speaker 1: prototype sex doll. Yeah, everybody's got a dirty secret, right,
Speaker 1: But that's a subject for another podcast. Yeah, I bet
Speaker 1: about old Lily wish that she was friends with Barbie.
Speaker 1: Now m Barbie's profits for two thousand and eight Top
Speaker 1: one point two billion. She kind of rules the world.
Speaker 1: She does. Barbie is the Oprah of the dull world.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. There you have it. And
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about Barbie's dirty past,
Speaker 1: check out this article written by our very own Kristen.
Speaker 1: And that's me What American icon was inspired by a
Speaker 1: German sex toy. And if you have any comments or questions,
Speaker 1: feel free to send us an email at mom stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
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