Dear Mattel: Please Build Lilli Again!

For more information about Lilli, click here, Barbie click here.
 In 1956, Ruth Handler went to Germany and bought three plastic dolls.  They were modeled after a cartoon character named Lilli from the cartoon Lilli in the Bild-Zeitung, a German newspaper. 

            Everybody knew this doll was a sex toy.  She was a stupid little plastic fashion doll.  She was funny, she was based on a funny character, and no mummy would ever give her baby Lilli.  If you ask me, it’s pretty clear that this wasn’t even really a doll to be played with, as she came with a doll stand.  She didn’t want to be your best friend, and she didn’t aspire to be an astronaut or an anorexic babysitter.  Lilli was just a sexy secretary willing to use men to get what she wanted.

            It was Handler who gave her baby, Barbara, a Bild Lilli from Germany and set out to turn them into the grown-up role models that every girl wants her grown-up doll to be.  Handler failed miserably from the start.  Parents even today worry about their daughters’ self-esteem as they dress what I’m going to call “New Look” Barbie.  Why?  I’m calling her New Look Barbie because the clothes she wore and her body shape (which was created) were definitely influenced by the shapes and silhouettes of Dior’s New Look, which often had inner corselets and bust padding or expected their wearers to also don tightly-laced corsets.

            Frankly, I don’t think there is very much wrong with the old Barbie or her post-1997 counterpart, who has a larger waist.  Mattel themselves said in ’97 that they changed Barbie’s body shape because it was more suited to modern fashions, which is true.  Try finding a body shaper at a department store today, and you’re more likely to be sent to the Spanx than the corset display. 

            We might be able to talk for hours and hours about how the New Look silhouette is unhealthy or that today’s Barbie isn’t any better, but by that point we’re talking about the fashion industry; bash live models before Barbie – she’s modeled after them.  Culpable instead is Ruth Handler, for taking Lilli, a plain vinyl doll shaped as though she were wearing certain foundation garments popular at the time and handing it to her daughter saying “here is a woman you can idolize, for she shall be a role model for all of your endeavors.*”  I don’t look at models like Heidi Klum or Kate Moss and expect them to become computer engineers, astronauts, teachers, doctors and probably a bunch of other careers requiring the 19-year-old to have doctoral or post-doc degrees.  If they do, that’s great, but at that point, they’re not models anymore.  They’re computer engineers or astronauts or teachers or doctors, and they’re probably not 19. 

            The problem with Barbie is her story, not her body.  Long ago, her name was Lilli, and she was a sexy secretary.  That was her character’s story.  Lilli was a fashion plate, not a role model.  She wore fashionable clothes that fashionable models wore, often with constrictive foundations.  As a doll, she was sculpted as though she was wearing them because it would be lame to put a corset on a doll. Today, models don’t wear those foundation garments, though they are quite thin.  Barbie is shaped fashionably because she has never lost her status as a fashion doll, only gained a variety of crazy careers and books while remaining Forever 19.

            Measure Barbie all you want.  She’s a fashion doll, and while she’s gained some status, that’s not who she is.  I say we should bring Lilli back to be what Barbie once was but has lost: the grown-up fashion doll for grown-ups, a plastic mini-model without the careers and the adorable life; that’s the part that’s ridiculous and annoying.

*Not an actual quote. 

PS – Happy Assonant Armistice Day, everyone!  We won’t have another one for a century.

Update: Couture Allure has a fabulous comparison between a vintage Barbie dress and Balenciaga here.