cREATIVE NON-FICtiON

Life in Plastic, It’s Craptastic

In 2016, new Barbie body shapes took toy aisles by storm. Joining Original Barbie were Curvy, Tall and Petite. An article from Time that year quoted then COO of Mattel, Richard Dickson, responding to any potential protests by saying, ‘Ultimately, haters are going to hate. We want to make sure the Barbie lovers love us more.’
	I am a Barbie lover. I’m an Aqua-level Barbie girl. My earliest memories include the video release of Barbie in the Nutcracker, which I rewound obsessively at aged three over the Christmas of 2001. My first stories were typed up on a 2005 Barbie branded typewriter. Recently, I’ve been scouring second hand sites and toy fairs and charity shops for my childhood favourites. I’ve managed to track down a couple of them in mint, boxed condition. They stand in my bookshelf, with their twin models from my childhood, dug out from the attic, sitting beside them, sporting experimental haircuts and discolouration from all manners of mishaps. Sun damage, chlorine stains, oxidisation. Well played with, well loved. I am, according to Richard Dickson, the exact person they were targeting with the change.
	Mattel debuted their new range of Barbie body types by revamping a long running Barbie line called Fashionistas. The Fashionistas line was first released in 2009. They took the place of 2004-2008’s Fashion Fever dolls, which itself succeeded from another line called Fashion Avenue. They were packaged in see through plastic tubes, and showcased the heights of 2000s kitsch, collaborating with popular girl groups, like Girls Aloud and Sugababes. The dolls’ outfits featured several layers, and miniature functional buckles and buttons, and detailed sequin and top stitched details. The first wave of Fashionistas in 2009 had everything Fashion Fever had and more: articulated limbs. I was ten at the time and overly concerned with whether I should still be playing with dolls or not. I bought one of them; a brunette with a streak of pink in her hair and a mesh top paired with a belted miniskirt. Basically, the most acceptably edgy one. The one I could argue was the most grown up. Each of the new dolls had a signature style. They were named according to a Spice Girls-esque convention with each doll embodying a specific image. Girly, Wild, Artsy, Cutie, Glam, Sassy (my one), and the obligatory charity case Ken, Hottie. The next year or so saw the release of more dolls dressed in high quality, prime proto-2010s fashions. Animal print leggings, statement necklaces, and popped collars all feature.
	Over the next couple of years Barbie managed to keep pace with the trends for the most part. But slowly, quality declined, alongside ambition. The articulated limbs went back to being stationary. Designs that might’ve been applique before were screen printed. They gave up painting any details on shoes. A sandal that might’ve had a brown sole and pink straps was now just a beige squishy block, blending into Barbie’s feet. And speaking of feet, the permanently flexed, demi-pointed foot was done away with, in favour of plastic perma-flat stompers. Sensible sneakers and jeggings were the order of the day. Barbie still pursued various careers, from astronaut to zookeeper, but where her work uniforms before might have had a frilly shoulder or a campy thematic bag, they were made realistic, sensible, and sapped of all of their whimsy. For the sake of realism? To purportedly uplift real women in these professions? Or to save a couple of bucks on manufacturing?
	These girls’ outfits were a long way from Fashion Fever’s stitched buttons and machine knit ponchos, and these were the outfits Mattel was planning to dress the new Curvy, Tall, and Petite bodied dolls in. Shapeless t-shirt dresses with bold text slogans. Miniature sweatpants. Outfits made of at best three pieces of clothing, but usually just one horizontally striped potato sack abomination. They packaged them in squishy plastic reusable bags that zipped up like pencil cases. I can only assume this was a crude attempt at greenwashing. They had a diverse array of new bodies, which were totally obscured by the formless clothes. In theory, that’s fine. Barbie is made to be undressed after all. But crucially, she is supposed to be redressed. There was no problem with the new bodies, as some purists claimed. It was that redressing them was no longer fun. The style and dress up aspect of play was wiped out, with these new dolls severely lacking any fashion pieces to mix and match.
	As an autistic girl, undiagnosed in the 2000s, sensory toys weren’t accessible to me. They hadn’t taken off the way they have now, when arguably neurotypical children need them just as much as neurodivergent ones, to compensate for their screentime addled attention spans. My sensory toys were my Barbie clothes. Buttons and zips and Velcro. Glitter. A whole range of synthetic fabrics, ribbed and mesh and fleece and everything in between. I used to play quietly in my room, picking out new outfits, combining pieces all sorts of ways, enjoying the feel and appreciating the final look. Even the sound of the fabric, rustling between my fingers gave me joy. Like this, I was able to regulate myself, engaging with nearly all of my senses. With the decline of Barbie’s garment quality, I can’t help but mourn the loss of this tactile experience for other children. Barbie clothes throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s were all made of sheeny fabric, something close to a football jersey. My least favourite.
	Additionally in 2016, Mattel debuted a new face sculpt for Barbie. Its name was Millie, taken from Barbara Millicent Roberts, Barbie’s full name. Millie was quickly instated as the new default face for playline Barbie dolls, with a closed and open mouthed variety, replacing a sculpt known interchangeably as Generation Girl, which had been primarily used for Barbie since the late 1990s, with some changes in screening (screening is how Barbie’s face is actually printed or painted onto the plastic) over time. Generation Girl is probably the best known Barbie face for older gen z like myself, but other notable sculpts over the years have included Superstar, who dominated from the 1970s all the way until the 1990s, Mackie, who also featured prominently around the new millennium following her introduction in 1991, and Steffie, who I see as Superstar’s less famous but more versatile and prolific sister. Every Barbie face mold can look incredibly different depending on the screening. Even switching from staring straight on to a side glance can transform a doll’s face. There are no bad head sculpts. Except, maybe, Millie.
	Millie and I aren’t friends. It’s hard to talk about her without sounding crazy. The other stuff, the decline in quality, the enshittification of the Barbie brand, is undeniable. I’ve spent the last couple of years working in a toy shop. For a doll collector like me, it’s as good as it can get. Rearranging the toys on the shelves isn’t miles away from playing with them. Other women that I work with, on finding out that I’m a Barbie nerd, often pull me in conspiratorially to ask if their eyes are for real, or if they’re going crazy. They’ve noticed Barbie’s freefalling standards too, and weren’t sure if their memories of her were just clouded by nostalgia, or if the brand was seriously sliding downhill. It isn’t just the quality though. It’s an increase in Barbie blind boxes. Mystery colour reveal dolls. Gambling for girls aged three and up. It’s unavoidable. It’s crushing.
	The problem with Millie is less obvious. The problem might not even be with Millie, it might be with me, totally of my own invention, but when I see her face, I shiver. I avoid looking her in her big blue eyes as much as possible at work, which is hard, because they are very big and very blue. Millie’s eyes are probably the biggest and bluest that Barbie’s have been since Superstar went into retirement. Her smile is wide, and baby pink, and as emotionless as the eyes above it. The proportions of the typical playline Millie face are blown up, exaggerated. This makes the pixelation often present on the faces Mattel puts out these days much more obvious. Millie’s passive, Mormon stare is unsettling from every angle. She is emblematic of Mattel’s 2010s attempt to exonerate Barbie of any past or potential controversy. She is sweet. She is more childlike than previous faces. She is so inoffensive that she leans into the uncanny.
	Then Barbie (2023) dropped. The doll community was more fired up than it’d been in years. Whispers were flung around, typed up in super subscript text on forums and blinking in and out of existence on Instagram stories. See the dolls they’re releasing for the movie? See the new Margot Robbie head sculpt? Barbie might be getting glam again. These rumours were only bolstered by the movie referencing some of Barbie’s most controversial releases. Magic Earring Ken, who became a gay icon for his conspicuous ring shaped necklace and mesh shirt, Teen Talk Barbie, whose infamous voice line ‘Math is hard’ caused outrage in 1992, and my own beloved Tanner the pooping dog all made brief appearances in the film. But then, once the movie dolls sold out, we were sent back to the t-shirt dress dimension. For two, three more years, we were stuck there.
	This year, the Fashionistas have remembered their name. Dolls arriving in stores this year have dressed themselves with the lights on. Featuring oversized flower accessories, hard plastic neckerchiefs, and matching two piece sets, it looks like the Barbie (2023) money has finally made its way back to the dolls themselves. But they are still poor quality. They are still paper. And they are still sandwiched on shelves between mystery box dolls and mermaids with hard plastic bikinis and tails. Their faces are made up of pixels, each one of them countable in their eyes. It feels like too little too late. For their numbers, for their dolls, and especially for the Barbie lovers.