The Secret of Barbie's Rivals

By NANCY GIBBS

Since parenting so often feels like one long exercise in humiliation, in which you think you know everything until your children arrive to prove you wrong, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find myself reconsidering my deepest beliefs about girls and their dolls, in the face of a merchandising watershed.

Like many moms of my era, I was one of those who righteously banned Barbie, the doll that launched a thousand women's studies dissertations, on the grounds that we didn't want our daughters' role model to be a giddy shopaholic who said, "Math class is tough!" and had a figure that defied the laws of gravity. That stance lasted until my older daughter was about 6 and a wise friend told me I was being an idiot by turning Barbie into forbidden fruit. Sure enough, when Sleeping Beauty Barbie arrived, she was played with happily for 48 hours and then put to sleep on the shelf in favor of the paintbox and the Beanie Babies.

Fast-forward a few years. Barbie is now poised to be toppled as the most popular girls' toy by a rival that makes Barbie look Amish: the Bratz doll, a brilliant invention of MGA Entertainment that you can tell instantly, from the very name, taps into the deep desire of daughters to drive their mothers insane.

Enter the world of Bratz dolls, and you can see that their bedrooms are not pink with daisy pillows on the beds, though girls can get a disco ball and a Plugged In Lip CD Boombox. Introduced in the summer of 2001, the dolls are cool, urban and multicultural, with names like Roxxi and Nazalia and Jade and Fianna. They have big heads and big hair, and faces that make you wonder if Angelina Jolie licensed her lips. The designers have even solved the problem of those infuriating little Barbie shoes. The Bratz feet are huge, and when you remove a shoe, the whole foot comes off with it, mildly grisly but much more practical. The dolls are a sisterhood, a rainbow coalition, and they come with killer accessories, like the sushi lounge with a karaoke stage, or the Lil' Gym with treadmill and exercise bike.

So what's not to like? After "The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie" (the name of an actual Occidental College course), was there not a need for a doll that "looks like America"? Absolutely, but diverse is one thing, dissolute another. Most critics focus on the clothes, which lean past trendy to trashy: torn jeans, bare navels, platform shoes, microskirts with chains. It's easy to imagine that behind those pouting lips lies a pierced tongue. But that's not really the issue. You could strip them naked, re-outfit them from Cinderella Barbie's closet and still have a problem.

It's all in the expression. Heavily made up, they look jaded, bored, if not actually stoned. You may want to play with them, but they don't want to play with you. And this matters, because when you watch little girls play, you realize that it's not just about fashion; it's about fantasy. Barbie joins the circus; Barbie teaches the teddy bears to read. You get the feeling that the Bratz dolls would come to life and protest if you told them they were entering a spelling bee.

So, having caved on Barbie for my firstborn, I banned the Bratz for my second, determined to draw a line somewhere, only to watch her fascination grow every time we passed the toy aisle at Target. Meanwhile, the competitive threat to Barbie did not go unnoticed by the makeover masters at Mattel. In the face of years of criticism, Nurse Barbie had turned into Doctor Barbie, Stewardess Barbie into Astronaut Barbie, with a host of multicultural friends. There was even Barbie for President 2004 in a trim red pantsuit with a Stars-and-Stripes scarf.

But somehow Barbie remains incurably pink and retro, because she is an icon, a Warhol painting, a Smithsonian exhibit. The latest attempt to make Barbie modern is a little painful to watch. Bling Bling Barbie looks like a Bratz clone. At the Toy Fair this week in New York City, Mattel is unveiling the new Ken, who has "hottie hair" and cooler clothes. Turns out Ken is a metrosexual now. Mattel talks about the "Barbie turnaround" it is planning, which just makes me worried about the prospect of Rhinoplasty Barbie (you can remake her face!) or Tattoo Barbie.

Suddenly Malibu Barbie is looking better to me. Once seen as insidious, she now looks innocent compared with her successors. As it happened, Santa overruled me and brought Daughter No. 2 a Bratz doll (though she came dressed in a karate outfit, which is practically a burqa by Bratz standards). Maybe in the best of all worlds, two sisters with two generations of dolls will play together. Barbie might loosen up a little and learn some new moves, while Roxxi might get some help in AP calculus. A mom can dream.