Dolls
Barbie began as the mildly erotic character Lilli created by German comic strip Illustrator Reinhard Beuthien for the tabloid, Bild-Zeitung. Part of her signature style included impossibly high heels. By 1953, Lilli had become so popular that the newspaper decided to make her into a doll that men could by at bars and tobacco shops.
In the last 1950s, the co-founder of Mattel, Ruther Handler, decided to transform Lilli into a fashion doll for young American girls, named Barbie. Part of Mattel’s business plan was to offer a wide range of clothes that could be purchased separately for the doll. Each outfit however, from ball gowns to beachwear, had to be worn with heels. Over the years, this created some challenges for Barbie, as footwear fashions and her range of activities changed.
In contrast, G. I. Joe was promoted as a brave young mano honor and action, serving his country by going on countless missions outfitted from head to toe in seemingly endless uniforms and equipment. He as an action figure. However, how different were they really? Both dolls reinforced gender roles but also promoted the consumption of clothing to reaffirm gender difference.
In 1964, Hasbro introduced G. I. Joe for boys to replicate Mattel’s success selling doll accessories. Despite being a doll, Hasbro insisted on using the term “action figure” even refusing to fill orders if stores dared to use the word doll.
What is the difference between a fashion doll and an action figure? This question was of grave concern when first Barbie and then G. I. Joe became popular in North American in the early 1960s. Barbie was promoted as an ideal young lady whose beauty was expressed through the consumption of an ever-growing line of glamours clothes for all manner of activities. She was the definition of a fashion doll.
The difference between GI Joe and Barbie are minor, but they mattered. Action rather that attraction was the mission for GI Joe. Each doll was flatfooted, fully jointed to allow for posing and sported a scar on this face suggesting that he was battle-hardened. Like barbie, however, numerous outfits could be purchased separately as a means of helping GI Joe engage in wider range of adventures.
Ken was introduced in 1961 as Barbie’ companion, making him a male doll intended for girls. Yet, as an icon of 1960s idealized masculinity, was he not also a man of action? Ken was given outfits that suggested that he was active, such as this tennis outfit complete with sneakers. However, Ken’s outfits suggest that his activities were more leisurely than adventurous, appropriate for a date but not saving the world.
Thus Briton’s, are procur’d the Eastern wares,
Your ivory cabinet, your ivory chairs:
Your silk, your costly gems and baneful Tea,
Pernicious Drug! to health an enemy!
Which for to gain, thousands Indians bleed
And base corruption ready-grown feed,
Is largely strewn, over Britain’s famous land
By an unprincipled, a savage band
--timothy touchstone, Tea and Sugar or the Nabob and Creole.
Many Europeans brought with them objects and practices that reminded them of home when they traveled. Although this tea and liquor travel set reads as European, it reflected the wider world. Its silk lining and porcelain tea accouterments were all originally Chinese products while its silver tongs, most likely made using silver from Spanish colonial holdings in South America, were designed to serve sugar refined in the West Indies. Its crystal glasses and decanter could have held liquor from a wide range of places perhaps including rum, which likewise came from the West Indies. The set suggests leisure and luxury, but much of what was meant to be enjoyed by the privileged was created through slave labor and imperialist exploits.
“I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country’s conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East—West Indies—and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators—indeed of all Christian navigators---is money—money—money.”
--Ignatius Sancho 1778
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I own I am shock’d at the purchase of slaves,
And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves ….
I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,
For how could we do without sugar and rum.
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