What should Barbie be?

Posted at 7:29 AM Jan 14, 2010

By Andrea Grimes

​Barbie used to live in a big, three-story dream house. She drove a tricked-out van, had a number of My Little Ponies in a stable out back and a wardrobe to die for. But now, Barbie's fate has changed. Now, she lives in a dank, dark space, crowded with her fellow forgotten peers. I speak of my Barbie. Or rather, the probably hundreds of Barbies I owned as a child that are now crammed into a trunk in the attic at my parents' house.

I loved and cherished my Barbies, by which I mean I abused them mercilessly. Not in an angry way, of course, but as far as wardrobe changes and hairdos, a runway model has nothing on what my Barbies endured. Which is all to say: does it matter what career wins out in Mattel's vote for who Barbie should be in 2010?


Any Barbie I owned didn't spend much time in her original clothing, or faux-grasping her original accessories. Microphones, boom boxes, shoes and hair-dryers were never attached to their original owner for long. Apart from Rock Star Barbie, I'm not even sure I can tell you what any of the others did for a living.

Anyway, Mattel is actually asking folks to vote on what Barbie should be next, and the options are: computer engineer, news anchor, environmentalist, surgeon and architect.

The reader who tipped us off to this survey was a clear fan of computer engineer Barbie, which would be especially fun if she gets a whole bunch of cool Barbie-sized computer things, like hard drives and tiny cans of Mountain Dew. (I've never known a computer engineer who didn't partially live on the stuff.)

But since, in my experience, Barbie loses her associated career-identity pretty quickly, knowing that she was once a computer engineer or architect doesn't seem particularly meaningful to me. It certainly wasn't to me and my friends when we were kids; we preferred making up our own stories and games that, more often than not, had nothing to do with Mattel or any other toy company's suggested use of their products. Then again, if you do have a toy hard drive laying around, that can shift the game in very different direction than if all the clothes that fit Barbie look like they're for Friday night clubbing.

What do you want Barbie to be, Dolls? And do you think little girls do see Barbie as a role model for what their future lives could be like?