Forever Barbie by M. G. Lord Read Free Book Online Page A

clothing over bare plastic, after all. Among Barbie's first garments were two strapless
     brassieres, one half-slip, one floral petticoat, and—God knows why—a girdle.
    Unmarried and what people used to call a "career girl," Charlotte never suffered for male attention. "She was very resourceful,"
     recalled Adler. "Before she would have dinner at the Imperial Hotel, she would survey the three dining rooms, and if she saw
     an eligible male eating by himself, she would eat in that dining room." Eventually, Nakamura said, "She found a boyfriend
     at the hotel. A Westerner—a gentleman from Germany or something."
    Nevertheless, doing business was tough for a woman in Japan. Often Japanese men expressed their scorn by excluding women from
     work-related socializing. But textile consultant Lawanna Adams, who worked with Charlotte in the Orient, remembers the exclusion
     as a blessing. After a typical business dinner, the men "would go out to get bombed"; she and Charlotte, however, would be
     dropped off at the hotel, free to get a good night's sleep.
    WHILE CHARLOTTE BRAINSTORMED IN TOKYO, HOUSE- wives all over Japan made her ideas real. Eyes straining, needles flying, they
     handstitched gold buttons onto Barbie's red "Sweater Girl" cardigan and attached flower appliques to her "Picnic Set" sunhat.
     They added chestnut fur to her "Golden Splendor" jacket and tacked bows onto her "Cotton Casual" sundress. They trimmed her
     "Barbie-Q" outfit with white lace. Then, after their handiwork had been vetted for flaws, they gave the garments to other
     housewives who stitched them into cardboard display packages.
    Called "homework people" because they toiled at home, they went blind so that Barbie could wear taffeta. They pricked their
     fingers so that she could have a ski holiday. They hunched over and wrecked their backs so that she wouldn't have to sleep
     in the nude. They were the original slaves of Barbie.
    "I think Japan was the perfect place [to make the doll] because of the patience of the workers," said Joe Cannizzaro, the
     Mattel efficiency expert who went to Japan in the sixties. "And their desire to do it right. I never saw any dresses—even
     white wedding dresses—get soiled, though they were in the homes and on the tatami floors, because everything was so spotless,
     so well taken care of. They were delivered by bike and by pickup truck. They were handled four, five, six times. And they
     never got dirty. It's amazing, really. I don't think there's any other country where you could do that."
    In factories, too, men sweated so that Barbie might dress. Machines pinged and clattered to make her clothes. One cut the
     fabric for her dresses and another sewed up their seams. Unlike homeworkers, who were paid by the pieces they produced, factory
     workers received a fixed wage. They lived in dormitories and were fed by factory owners. In August, however, everybody quit.
     "It was rice harvesting time," Cannizzaro explained.
    By 1958, dolls had begun to emerge from doll molds in Tokyo. Filaments of gold or brown Saran were machine-stitched along
     their vinyl hairlines and pulled taut over their otherwise naked skulls. Ponytails were affixed. Eyes were painted with a
     masklike template that became clogged about every twentieth doll. Their glance was sidelong, formed by eerie white irises
     under ominous black lids. The dolls looked as if they had a history; as if they, in their Lilli incarnation, had seen the
     smoldering ruins of postwar Germany and knew the horrors that preceded them. The dolls did not look either innocent or American.
     It was Mattel's job to make them appear to be both.

    AS STRATEGY SESSIONS BEGAN IN HAWTHORNE, THE Handlers made a brilliant tactical move. They commissioned a toy study from Ernest
     Dichter, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Motivational Research in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The study cost a staggering
     $12,000 and took six months to complete, but when it was finished the