Barbie goes for gold

Barbie goes for gold

Dear oh dear, Barbie's just got bigger. As part of what is being called the largest merchandising effort at any Olympics, the organising committee for the Sydney Games is offering special Barbie dolls in a range of sporty outfits. And in a nod of acceptance to the ``fuller'' Australian woman, Barbie's manufacturers Mattel claim to have done the unthinkable -- expanded her hourglass figure horizontally. It is a different matter that most of us will probably not be able tell the difference as a visibly darker Barbie turns out in a green tracksuit. Sure, her bosom and hips are no longer twice as large as her waist, and her feet are no longer as tiny as they were a couple of years ago so as to summon instant visions of the Chinese footbinding tradition. All the same, this fast-selling item at the Games venue makes for a most absurd and entirely unhealthy contrast with the strength and perfection of the thousands of female athletes who will congregate in Sydney in a sublime effort to go swifter, higher,stronger.

Ever since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, commerce and marketing have become an integral part of the Games. And why not? But inviting Mattel to peddle their products at official retail outlets is pushing it too far. In the four decades since a porno-toy called Lilli metamorphosed into Barbie and became a little girl's favourite toy -- a leggy, blue-eyed blond to whom she would submit all fantasies of the shape and allure of her tomorrow self -- she has proved to be infinitely flexible. So if till now there were Oriental, Hispanic and Black Barbies, Barbies in saris and Barbies on their way to the White House, now we have an athletic Barbie. As always, this new avatar, with her legs twice as long as her torso, is as removed from reality as ever. And the effect could be just as deleterious. As Germaine Greer wrote in òf40óThe Whole Woman, ``Barbie has been instrumental in teaching broad-shouldered women, short-legged women, wide-bodied women, real women the world over to despise their bodies.''

It is a beauty myth that takes one back to a teary-eyed burst from one of the best female athletes of the 20th century, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Reacting to the epithet `ugly', she once protested that she felt beautiful inside. It is symptomatic of an increasingly ornamental culture that she felt constrained to react at all. Her back-to-back heptathlon golds in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics may have established her pursuit of excellence, her successful long jump in 1992 may have been described as poetry in motion, but there was a wide spectrum of observers measuring her worth against the Barbie ideal of the 1990s. And outfitting Barbie in a pair of sneakers is not likely to change any of that. These are admittedly consumerist times, and luxuriating in a culture of complaint to whine about the Anna Kournikovas -- who attract attention and sponsorships far in excess of their sporting triumphs -- would be pointless. Even so, it would be in the fitness of things to put Barbie back on a diet and banish her from officialOlympics stores.