Pulchritudinous Barbie
By
Gerry Niskern
Pulchritudinous, (a person of breathtaking, heartwarming beauty)
That’s how the little girls who received first Barbies felt. Here was a beautiful doll that they could dress up like a grownup and their dreams had no bounds with Barbie. Their mothers liked Barbie, and grandma’s loved her too. Who do you think was buying all those cute outfits?
Evidently those first edition Barbies are very rare. The collectors will pay up to $ 27,000 for Barbie in “pristine” condition. A doll in “played with” condition will even bring up to $ 8,000.
The first Barbie that lived in our home didn’t stand a chance. My daughter received her for Christmas in l959 when she was seven. The iconic fashion doll had a black and white striped bathing suit, long blonde hair caught in a pony tail and of course, high heels. She had some outfits, but the best was the red satin lined fur coat that a loving aunt sewed for her. She also crocheted Barbie a red bathing suit and a sweater to wear with a red quilted circular skirt.
Then, one day, disaster struck! While she was at school, her little brother, a precocious, almost three-year-old decided he would paint Babbie’s finger nails. He explained it this way, “ I got a little bit on her hand, so I painted her hand. Then I got a little bit on her arm so I painted her arm, but I got a little bit on her neck, so I painted everywhere and then I got a little on her face, so……….”
Trouble was, when I used nail polish to remove the bright red paint from my distraught daughter’s doll, it removed all her original painted on facial features. She was a bland albino. Sister got a new Barbie, this time a redhead with a bubble hair style. Creative little brother suffered garnishment of his weekly allowance until new Barbie was paid for. His weekly trip to 7-Eleven for candy was profoundly missed.
Looking back decades ago, I remember playing paper dolls with a character I cut out of the Sunday comics every week who was an early Barbie type. Her name was Fritz Ritz and she had cute figure and high fashion clothes too. I drew and colored a new wardrobe for her every week. Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie said she got the idea for Barbie while watching her daughter play with paper dolls. She designed Barbie along the lines of a popular risqué German fashion doll.
Women who are grandmothers, and even some great-grandmothers today, were the first little girls to love Barbie. But if you remember, a lot of the little boys liked to play with her too. A friend told me about buying her little nephew a Barbie when he was around four and had begged for the doll. He had lots of outfits for Barbie and kept all her matching little heels in a plastic Ziploc bag. He insisted that she have a new outfit for Thanksgiving that year. She also remembers several months later seeing Barbie hanging by one leg from the ceiling fan, totally naked. That was the last time she saw her.
My daughter enjoyed her Barbies for many years and then one day when she was around thirteen she walked in with the bag full of dolls and clothes and said, “Here, throw these away.” I took them and just put them quietly away for safe keeping. I offered them to her later after she was married. She was glad to get them, but her creative, youngest son, around four or five was really happy. He loved playing with his mom’s Barbies.
But the problem was that when his best friend came to the door, (like a lot of little boys who loved Barbie,) he had to quickly shove all of the Barbies under his bed!