With over 12,000 dolls, Jian Yang has one of the largest collections in the world. How much do you spend on your obsession with pink?
«Especially at a time like this when you can't have a budget!» Robin Gee tells me via video link from her «home office/Barbie room» in Los Angeles. «It's Barbie convention time and that's why everyone [in Florida] is buying heartily and now we have a movie.»
It's 4am, her time, and Gee is still awake because she's feverishly getting ready for the biggest Barbie outing ever. The 11.5-inch icon has been around for 64 years and has sold over a billion dolls. But with the release of the Barbie feature film on July 21, life in plastic will become even more fantastic.
For superfans — those who can remember the name of the official purple Barbie (Pantone 219 C) and who can remember tapping their gifts to hear which one had a plastic window — it has always been more than a child's toy. Barbara Millicent Roberts, a multi-faceted character, pioneering feminist and global cultural icon, is finally getting that Hollywood treatment that much lesser toy mortals already have.
Reaction to early previews of the fantasy satire that director Greta Gerwig co-wrote with her partner Noah Baumbach and stars Margot Robbie was enthusiastic. Variety called it «perfection».
Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie as Barbie. Photo: courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Gee bought 12 tickets to the Barbie Blowout Party to celebrate. “I decided I was going to make a present for all my friends. That means 12 in total,” she says over the noise of a laser machine cutting tiny pieces of plastic for her dioramas. Surrounded by hundreds of tiny shoes and an abundance of pink flowers, she creates a Mid-Century Art Nouveau living room vignette for each pal and bespoke outfits for their dolls.
Ji comes of age with her petite friend. Both were born in 1959, but while Gee retired from her local government jobs, Barbie, created by US mother Ruth Handler to allow girls to pretend to be someone other than a carer, is still hard at work for her boss, Mattel, Inc.
The 63-year-old received her first No. 5 ponytail brunette at the age of four, and her mother made a dress for her with «beautiful blue brocade and silver trim.» Ji won a doll contest at her preschool and has been hooked ever since.
Superfan Robin Gee with her Barbie purchases
“My favorite was Stacey, Barbie's British friend, so I was a little Asian girl with a fake British accent. I had a house and a car and a kitchen and we made a whole playroom. The footstool would have been an apartment—the dolls lived under it.”
Gee was already busy before Margot Robbie showed up. She is a member of four Barbie clubs and recently helped organize «Midgevention» to celebrate the 60th birthday of Barbie's «not-so-photogenic» friend. «We reimagined if Midge got a fair shake.
“Now we are all together in a frenzy over the film, feeling that our time has come. But now I have to fight with new fans for all the tickets and everything that is sold out, ”she adds, vainly checking to see if she got a prize on the premiere’s pink carpet. Budget — Barbie Convention Time': Robin G with Barbie
Norita Bergmann can understand the mixed feelings about Johnny-Come-Recently. A retired nurse from Detroit, Michigan, received her first Barbie at the age of 11 in 1959, Barbie No. 1, «the most original.»
“My godmother was a doll collector and she knew that I loved dolls. I didn't like dolls, I liked paper dolls that had a sense of style. So she bought me my first one, and I still have it. I still love her.» She's probably worth $7,000. «But you'll have to rip her out of my cold, dead hand.»
The 74-year-old woman says she's «treated like an OG. I'm one of the old girls. It's pretty clear that I know where all the bodies are buried.»
In 1997, she spoke out against Mattel in an uprising still known to the fraternity as the «Pink Protest». Zealous lawyers began bombarding collectors with «cease and desist» letters for using the trademark in their activities. At the same time, Barbie lovers were outraged by the deterioration in quality, which led to inappropriate shoes and low-quality hairstyles.
Norita Bergmann at Barbie's 50th Anniversary Dream Home in Malibu < p>A few days before Twitter, they took up their pink papers, scattered in letters of complaint and organized a boycott. Mattel gave in.
«It was sort of the end of my love for Barbie because I really thought they were killing her,» says Bergmann, who has to complete her collection before moving into a retirement apartment.
She had similar concerns when the film was first announced. “I thought they were going to ruin everything royally. I thought they were going to make fun of this and us. And we do not want to be humiliated, as we have been for many years.”
Critics keep pointing out that Barbie's waist is 20cm smaller than anorexic controls, and that if she were a real woman, she wouldn't be able to stand up. “Realistic little girls should be given the opportunity to recognize her as a disabled person and provide her with a wheelchair,” wrote feminist Germaine Greer, “but Barbie fans prefer to promote her as an unmarried careerist girl, female liberation in character.” Bergmann says simply: “Little girls know what they want. They're a lot smarter than adults think,» and adds that the waist is only so small to compensate for how unwieldy cloth looks when she's draped over the doll.
Like most fans, she was skeptical about the casting of Robbie, 33, as a teen model, let alone Ryan Gosling, 42, as Ken's boyfriend. «I think she's a bit old for a Barbie,» says Bergmann. “But I'm a little too old to be anyone. So I'm ready to agree.”
Some were surprised at how far the filmmakers were allowed to go. Matthew Belloni, host of The Town podcast, who attended the premiere, said: «There's an F-bomb in the movie, some say motherfucker is a squeak, but there's boob jokes, there's a joke about Mattel's creator having tax problems. The whole villain of the movie is patriarchy… it's really not for kids.”
Bergmann is deadpan. “Tits and Barbie are just part of the personality. I'm sure parents will be outraged by the use of the word «f—«. However, there is nothing that a child does not hear every day. Tax [issues] are a fact. I'm very happy that Mattel has opened up to this.» Gee wonders if Belloni is «a pissed-off boyfriend who got dragged along and doesn't have a good Kenerji.»
Robin G is a member of four Barbie clubs
As a collector of (at last count) 12.00 0 dolls and a professional toy salesman, Jian Yang sees both sides of the lucrative equation.
A 43-year-old man from Singapore, who wears a white T-shirt with KEN written in large pink letters, got his first four-year-old by grabbing a present under the Christmas tree meant for his one-year-old sister (it was a Barbie in great shape, complete with a turquoise swimsuit, spats and a headband). how the hell can a brand stay so relevant?”
The answer lies in the doll's eternal ability to stay ahead of cultural trends. In 1965, she made her way into space with Miss Astronaut Barbie, four years before a man walked on the moon and 18 years before she became America's first female astronaut. In 1967, British model Twiggy became the first celebrity to have a dress made in her own likeness. Since then, we've had President Barbie, Barbie with different skin tones and body shapes, and Transgender Barbie.
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The same is true for Young, whose more numerous boy toys, including Star Wars and Transformers, have come and gone, while Barbie endured. As a child, he enjoyed pairing signature versions of his dolls with his few designer clothes. As an adult, he curates his collection for his 35,000 Instagram followers, including designing «flushable fashion» for hotel toilet paper figurines when he travels abroad.
His only reservation about the film was that it would impose a dictatorial mold on fan-imagined Barbie universes. “I joke that all Asian Barbies take off their shoes before entering the Dream House. And if you're African, your Barbie will have her own behavior. We'll all play with the same skinny white blonde.»
Londoner Drew James mostly keeps his collection. “Life with that can get pretty tedious, all that pink plastic,” says the 39-year-old personal shopper and fashion writer from his ultra-minimalist home. He sold his Barbie Cher in an outfit designed by Bob Mackie for £2,000 to a collector who saw one of his Instagram posts. The Karl Lagerfeld model he paid £140 for is now worth around £9,000.
It's constantly evolving because it reflects the trends we're currently living in,» he says. «It's like a very small time capsule.»
He thinks the film is «too late» but wants it to have glamour, not social commentary. “Hopefully it won’t be like [Sex and the City spin-off] And Just Like That… where they tried to solve all the world’s problems.
“I’m not going to go and see Barbie in the movies to get it fixed. I can watch the news. I want it to be kitsch. I want to go and watch Barbie drift off into this dreamland.”
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